Dr Christopher Russo wins microscopy medal

Dr Christopher Russo, College Research Associate at St John’s, has been awarded the Microscopy Society of America Burton Medal.

Chris Russo, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, has won the Microscopy Society of America Burton Medal for 2017. The medal is awarded annual to an individual under 40 years old who has made distinguished contributions to the field of microscopy and microanalysis.

Chris is an Independent Investigator Scientist in the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology’s Structural Studies Division in Cambridge. He started out by studying for his PhD at Harvard University and MIT, and completed his thesis on imaging DNA attached to carbon nanotubes using several microscopy methods. He went on to do a post doc in the physics department at Harvard, where he developed a new technique to create nanopores in graphene with atomic precision.

He then moved to the LMB, joining Lori Passmore’s group, and they worked on developing new methods for electron cryomicroscopy (cryo-EM), leading to a number of advances including simple techniques to modify graphene for use as a specimen support for biological molecules and the development of a new specimen support structure, made entirely of gold, that reduced movement during imaging by fifty-fold. He set up his own group at LMB and continues to study the physical phenomena that limit resolution in cryo-EM and enable the development of new devices and methods to improve the imaging power of the electron microscope in biology.

Chris Russo will be presented with his award in Missouri in August at the Microscopy Society of America’s Awards Ceremony.

To read more about Chris’s group, visit his website: http://www.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/crusso/