UChicago Light Microscopy Core Facility

villi

Our Mission

The Microscopy Core was created in 1997 to serve the University of Chicago's research community. The facility was established to provide state-of-the-art microscopy imaging stations that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive for individual laboratories to obtain on their own. Though we are not a service facility (i.e. we do not routinely perform experiments the users), we will provide assistance on the imaging aspects of the user's experiment. We have developed a strong and broad base of users and continue to train new users. Cancer Center and Digestive Disease members receive a discount via co-payments from their center grants.

Intestinal villi stained with WGA
image courtesy of Dr. Vesta Valuckaite

Technical Directors

Vytas Bindokas, PhD; Facility Director and Technical Director, AB-129. Dr. Bindokas serves as full-time director of all Core operations and directs day-to-day operations at the Abbott 129 location. He has over 30 years experience (via four institutions) in light microscopy methods, specializing in physiologic measurements including ratiometric probes, FRET, confocal techniques and image analysis. He has been at the University of Chicago for over 18 years (Research track equivalent to Associate Professor) and has over 70 peer-reviewed publications.

Shirley Bond, MA; Technical Director, Knapp Center, Room 1250. Shirley Bond serves as a Technical Director of the Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery site. She has over 25 years experience in light microscopy - over 11 years of which were spent at the University of Chicago. Earlier she served 11 years at the University of Illinois Medical Center where she was involved in research and in clinical immunopathology. Shirley also worked as a research microscopist for several years and trained under Anna Teetsov.

Christine Labno, PhD; Technical Director, Knapp Center 1250. Dr. Labno was hired in January 2006 to serve as Assistant Technical Director. She received her PhD at the University of Chicago Department of Pathology, specializing in immunostaining (including antibody generation) and cytoskeletal biology.

Benjamin Glick, PhD; Scientific Director. Professor, Dept. of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology, Cancer Research Center, and Institute for Biophysical Dynamics.
Jerrold Turner, MD, PhD; Advisory Committee Co-Chair. Professor and Associate Chair, Dept. of Pathology/MPMM.
Victoria Prince, PhD; Advisory Committee Co-Chair. Associate Professor, Dept. of Organismal Biology and Anatomy and Committees on Cancer Biology, Cell Physiology, Developmental Biology and Molecular Medicine.
Marsha Rosner, PhD. Charles B. Huggins Professor and Chair, Ben May Dept. for Cancer Research.
Eric Schwartz, MD. Professor and Chair, Dept. of Neurobiology, Pharmacology and Physiology and Committees of Neurobiology and Cell Physiology.
Gopal Thinakaran, PhD. Associate Professor, Dept. of Neurobiology and Committees of Neurobiology, Molecular Medicine and Cell Physiology.

Office of Shared Research Facilities

As part of the University of Chicago's Office of Shared Research Facilities (OSRF), we are open to all members of the University community. The mission of the OSRF is to provide centralized areas of technology and expertise in a wide variety of services to support the research efforts of the University faculty. The demonstrated needs of the faculty are the driving force behind new developments in existing facilities and in the development of new facilities