News and Highlights
Funding
25 March 2026
Wellcome Trust Bioimaging Technology Development Scale-up Award
The Optical Neurophysiology Laboratory and collaborators across Bioengineering, EEE, and Brain Sciences have been awarded a Wellcome Trust Bioimaging Technology Development Scale-up Award for Optical Oscilloscope: Real-time, high-throughput, volumetric voltage imaging.
Lab News
13 March 2026
Doctoral Thesis Defense
Congratulations to Dr Yilin Sun on successfully defending her doctoral thesis. We are delighted to celebrate this major milestone and Yilin’s contributions to the laboratory’s work on optical voltage imaging and cancer cell electrodynamics.
Talks and Conferences
13 October 2025
Invited lecture at MiFoBio 2025
Amanda Foust gave an invited lecture at MiFoBio 2025, the CNRS interdisciplinary thematic school for biological imaging, on “Light-field deep learning for fast, sensitive 4D imaging in scattering tissue” as part of the module “Waves on living organisms: breakthrough strategies in life imaging.”
Talks and Conferences
22 July 2025
Volumetric Imaging of Neural Circuit Connectivity and Dynamics Workshop
The Optical Neurophysiology Laboratory hosted an international workshop bringing together innovators and users of volumetric neural imaging technologies, supported by the Wellcome Trust Bioimaging Technology Development Award.
Awards
11 April 2025
Best poster award at the Bioelectricity Cluster Meeting
Congratulations to Bina Eniva, who was awarded a best poster prize at the Bioelectricity Cluster Meeting in Oxford for her poster, “Optogenetic modulation of breast cancer cells to study the functional consequences of voltage fluctuations.” We are delighted to see Bina’s work recognised by the international bioelectricity community.
Outreach and Engagement
16 April 2024
Talk for FemSTEM at Northeastern University London
Amanda Foust delivered an inspirational talk to the FemSTEM chapter at Northeastern University London on neural interfaces. The talk introduced how brains and neurons work, the basics of neural interfaces, research in the Optical Neurophysiology Laboratory, and advice for students interested in entering the field.
Outreach and Engagement
18–19 June 2022
Learning with Neurons: A Musical Journey at the Great Exhibition Road Festival
The Optical Neurophysiology Laboratory collaborated with professional harpist Irantzu Agirre to present Learning with Neurons: A Musical Journey, a performance for the 2022 Great Exhibition Road Festival in South Kensington. The piece set videos of neural images to harp music from different historical periods, inviting audiences to experience brain activity through sound and image.
Talks and Conferences
26 February 2021
OSA Celebrates Engineers Webinar
Amanda Foust gave an invited OSA Celebrates Engineers Webinar for The Optical Society on “Balancing the photon budget for optical neurophysiology.”
Outreach and Engagement
29-30 June 2019
Creating a Mind at the Great Exhibition Road Festival
Optical Neurophysiology Laboratory members and local artists collaborated to bring neural circuits to life through a hands-on public engagement workshop. Visitors constructed neurons from willow and coloured tissue, then connected them into a three-dimensional network exploring how brain cells form circuits.
