Personnel
 |
Sam Johnson, PhD
sam.johnson@duke.edu |
"Director" |
Sam has been building and running the LMCF since March 2006. Previously he was a Postdoc in Tony Hunter's lab at the Salk Institute, CA where he became interested in techniques for studying signaling events in living cells. In attempting such techniques he spent a lot of time in rooms with no windows and also learned a fair amount about microscopes, microscopy and image analysis. He received a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Bristol and studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge in the UK.
He is interested in all aspects of imaging and should be contacted if he can be of any assistance to your research. He oversees the facility, teaches microscopy classes and provides some of the training and support for the all the microscopes and image analysis workstations.
 |
Yasheng Gao, PhD ("Gao") ygao@duke.edu |
"Microscopy
Specialist " |
Gao began working in LMCF in October 2008. He has a PhD in Cell Biology obtained from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His research mainly focused on intracellular membrane trafficking, the cytoskeleton, endocytosis/phagocytosis and cell signaling. He has been a regular user of different microscopes in the LMCF for several years as a post-doc in the Yao lab at Duke. He is particularly experienced in immunofluorescence.
Gao supports most of the microscopes but mainly the systems in LSRC where he is based.
 |
Benjamin Carlson, PhD
benjamin.carlson@duke.edu |
"Microscopy
Specialist " |
Ben began working in LMCF in January of 2012. He has a PhD in Cell Biology obtained here at Duke University. His research focused on membrane protrusion development in neurons and how dysregulation of the formation of these protrusions alter synapse formation and contribute to mental retardation. He has been a regular user of the microscopes in Nanaline Duke for several years as a graduate student in the Soderling Lab performing a wide range of imaging and analysis. Previous to his work and study in biological fields, Ben trained and worked as an Engineer, including some time at NASA, and is keen to develop the image analysis capabilities of LMCF.
Ben provides most of the support for the Nanaline Duke systems and works with many other systems across LMCF.
| Ivalee Forehand
ivalee.forehand@duke.edu |
"Billing
and Accounts"
|
Ivalee takes care of sending out and processing the monthly bills to all the labs that use LMCF. Please contact Ivalee for any questions regarding bills or to change fundcode.
Governance
The Members of the Oversight and Faculty Advisory Committees are listed on the About LMCF page
Alumnus
 |
Heather S Gavilan |
Heather has managed microscopes at Duke for several years but is currently taking a career break to attend to the needs of her young family. Prior to Heather's microscope support work with LMCF, she worked in Rick Fehon's lab for 7 years where she managed and regularly used the Zeiss 410 and 510 confocals for imaging Drosophila. Before her laboratory career, Heather spent two years teaching high school science. Heather received a BS in Biology with Chemistry minor from Virginia Tech.