Melissa Mather

Last updated

Melissa Louise Mather
Alma mater Queensland University of Technology
Scientific career
Institutions Keele University
National Physical Laboratory
University of Nottingham
Thesis Ultrasound evaluation of radiation sensitive polymer gels  (2003)

Melissa Louise Mather is an Australian physicist who is Professor in Biological Sensing and Imaging at the University of Nottingham. Her research considers the development of novel sensing techniques, including ultrasound, single molecule imaging and nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond.

Contents

Early life and education

Mather was an undergraduate student in physics at the Queensland University of Technology. [1] She remained at QUT for her doctoral research, where she used ultrasound to investigate radiation sensitive polymer gels, [2] based at the Centre for Medical, Health and Environmental Physics. She moved to the University of Nottingham as a research fellow in Applied Ultrasonics, [1] where she studied industrially relevant suspensions using ultrasound. She also studied phase transitions in supercritical fluids. She then moved to the Applied Optics group as part of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Grand Challenge in Regenerative Medicine.[ citation needed ]

Research and career

Mather moved to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in 2008, where she worked developed acoustic methods to study hydrogels. The NPL is the United Kingdom's measurement standards laboratory, and Mather developed an international standard on hydrogel characterisation with ASTM International. [3]

Mather returned to the University of Nottingham in 2011, joining the Institute of Biophysics, Imaging and Optical Science (IBIOS) as an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellow. [4] At IBIOS, Mather worked on a liposome-based ultrasonic transducer and label-free optical microscopy for high-resolution cellular imaging. [4] This imaging technique can help to predict stem cell differentiation, which is critical for the development of novel therapeutic strategies. She was appointed Director of the IBIOS in 2014. Mather moved to Keele University as Professor of Biomedical Imaging in 2015. [5] [6] She was awarded a European Research Council grant to study the structure of transmembrane proteins.[ citation needed ] By developing single molecule approaches Mather was able to image the proteins (ion channels) in their natural environment, which helps to understand various physiological processes.

Mather was moved back to the University of Nottingham in 2018, where she studied nitrogen-vacancy centers for quantum sensing. [1] [7]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Soft matter</span>

Soft matter or soft condensed matter is a subfield of condensed matter comprising a variety of physical systems that are deformed or structurally altered by thermal or mechanical stress of the magnitude of thermal fluctuations. These materials share an important common feature in that predominant physical behaviors occur at an energy scale comparable with room temperature thermal energy, and that entropy is considered the dominant factor. At these temperatures, quantum aspects are generally unimportant. Soft materials include liquids, colloids, polymers, foams, gels, granular materials, liquid crystals, flesh, and a number of biomaterials. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who has been called the "founding father of soft matter," received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1991 for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to the more complex cases found in soft matter, in particular, to the behaviors of liquid crystals and polymers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hydrogel</span> Soft water-rich polymer gel

A hydrogel is a biphasic material, a mixture of porous, permeable solids and at least 10% by weight or volume of interstitial fluid composed completely or mainly by water. In hydrogels the porous permeable solid is a water insoluble three dimensional network of natural or synthetic polymers and a fluid, having absorbed a large amount of water or biological fluids. These properties underpin several applications, especially in the biomedical area. Many hydrogels are synthetic, but some are derived from nature. The term 'hydrogel' was coined in 1894.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 "Staff Listing - The University of Nottingham". www.nottingham.ac.uk. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  2. Mather, Melissa Louise (2003). Ultrasound evaluation of radiation sensitive polymer gels (Thesis). OCLC   225209630.
  3. "New ASTM Standard Guide Characterizes Hydrogels in Regenerative Medicine | NEWSROOM". newsroom.astm.org. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  4. 1 2 "Organic medical imaging system to detect disease and track medication - The University of Nottingham". www.nottingham.ac.uk. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  5. Translate, Istm (17 August 2015). "ISTM Translate: Melissa Mather - ISTM's New Professor of Biomedical Imaging". ISTM Translate. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  6. University, Keele. "2017, Keele University". Keele University. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  7. Radu, Valentin; Price, Joshua Colm; Levett, Simon James; Narayanasamy, Kaarjel Kauslya; Bateman-Price, Thomas David; Wilson, Philippe Barrie; Mather, Melissa Louise (27 March 2020). "Dynamic Quantum Sensing of Paramagnetic Species Using Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers in Diamond". ACS Sensors. 5 (3): 703–710. doi:10.1021/acssensors.9b01903. ISSN   2379-3694. PMC   7106109 . PMID   31867948.