What I like to do
Microscopy
For my current dissertation work, I primarily use a spinning disk confocal and and Zeiss 880 Airyscan. Live cell imaging is achieved with endogenously tagging our proteins of interest with a fluorescent protein or overexpressing a fluorescent construct. I visualize and quantify these proteins and their dynamics to gain basic understanding of how cells build forces necessary in physiology. I also make fun lookup tables (LUTs) that present the data in color schemes that make it easier to see certain features of the images.
Graphic Design
In order to better illustrate (pun intended) mine and my lab’s work, I started working in Adobe Illustrator to create figures and diagrams. I have found in many contexts these cartoons are so essential to quickly communicating my ideas and research conclusions. They have also helped me convince my family that what I’m doing isn’t make believe and can be understood by anyone!
Image Analysis
Image analysis goes hand in hand with the high resolution imaging that I am doing for my dissertation. I don’t just want to make pretty movies (although that is definitely a perk), but I also want to use these movies to gain an understanding of the biology that I am watching. A lot of the commercial software on the market can do amazing job at analysis, but often you have to tailor the approach to your particular problem, or you just need free and accessible tools. To this end I rely heavily on FIJI and when needed write/adapt image analysis code in python.