December, 2023: Our research has been featured in the December edition of Delft Matters. Click below to read the full article: “Hersenkronkels”.

November 28, 2023: Franca auf der Heiden presented a poster and gave a talk at the workshop Women in Photonics in Jena, Germany. The workshop aims at connecting excellent female scientists at the beginning of their career with experts in photonics.

November 10, 2023: We have received a 20 k€ grant from the Delft Bioengineering Institute for our proposal “Disentangling the brain’s fiber network using 3D-nanofabrication and scattered light”, together with the lab from Angelo Accardo (TU Delft, 3mE). We will use the money to 3D-manufacture fiber networks to improve the interpretation of scattering signals and enable a reliable 3D-reconstruction.

November 9, 2023: Our group had a poster presentation and flash talk at the 5th BEI Meeting Neuroscience & Engineering at Theater De Veste in Delft.

October 22, 2023: Our lab participated in the Science Day 2023 of the TU Delft. The target group were children until 14 years. In our booth, we explained how the brain’s nerve fiber network can be determined with scattered light imaging, using a torch light. Click below for more images!

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October 10, 2023: Loes Ettema presented a poster at the NWO Biophysics in Veldhoven, the annual Dutch conference on physics of life, and gave a poster pitch.

September 18, 2023: Pim van Beeck and Francisco Salgado have joined the Menzel Lab. Pim will study fibrin networks in blood clots with ComSLI. Francisco will analyze scattering signals with machine learning approaches to improve the fiber reconstruction.

Pim did his Bachelor in Nanobiology at TU Delft and Erasmus MC (Netherlands), and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Applied Physics at TU Delft. Francisco holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering Physics from the University of Porto (Portugal), and is currently enrolled in the Engineering Physics Master’s program, with a specialized focus on intelligent systems and data analysis.

September 8, 2023: Our research has been featured in the September edition of C2W - Mens & Molecule. Click below to read the full article: “Nieuw zicht op vervlochten zenuwvezels”.

September 4, 2023: Achere Eyong and Simon van Staalduine have joined the Menzel Lab. They are both students of the Nanobiology Master’s program at TU Delft and will work on their end projects.

Achere will develop a portable setup to enable clinical applications of Computational Scattered Light Imaging. Simon will work on improving the efficiency of information uptake from light scattering patterns.

July 1, 2023: Loes Ettema has joined the Menzel Lab. She will develop dedicated tissue preparation and measurement protocols for Computational Scattered Light Imaging, allowing to disentangle densely interwoven fiber networks - not only in the brain, but also in other fibrous tissue samples containing muscle or collagen fibers.

Loes received her Bachelor’s degree in Medical Natural Sciences and her Master’s degree in Biomedical Technology and Physics, both at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She worked in the Biophotonics and Medical Imaging group, supervised by Dr. Freek Ariese and Prof. dr. Marloes Groot, where she performed label-free Raman and fluorescence imaging on Alzheimer’s diseased brain tissues, and used second harmonic generation microscopy to image axon-like structures in differentiated cell cultures.