BMI Professor Vikas Singh Co-PI on Beckman Foundation award to develop smart lightsheet technology

Professor Vikas Singh is co-Principal Investigator on a new 5-year, $1.2 million award from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation to the Morgridge Institute for Research. The project, led by Morgridge Investigators Jan Huisken and Kevin Eliceiri (also Medical Physics in SMPH) and Biostatistics and Medical Informatics Professor Vikas Singh, is to develop and advance light sheet microscopy technology.

This is a highly collaborative project with contributions from a number of other UW-Madison faculty, including Mary Halloran (Medical Physics) and Aussie Suzuki (Oncology) from the School of Medicine and Public Health; and Bill Bement, (Zoology in the College of Letters and Science and the Laboratory of Cell and Molecular Biology in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education).

Light sheet microscopy has the potential to revolutionize imaging by allowing investigators to create 3-D views of entire organisms over time. The advantage is that it allows researchers to follow a biological event over time, such as embryo development, by tracking the organism wherever it goes rather than relying on the fixed viewpoint available with other imaging technologies.

Professor Singh will be leading the efforts to develop the algorithms and machine learning components of the “smart microscope” the group is developing.

You can read more about the award, lightsheet microscopy, and the Flamingo microscope technology on the Morgridge Institute for Research news page:

Beckman Award Story

Light Sheet Microscopy and the Flamingo Project

Congratulations to everyone participating in this important research!