BINA Careers Speaker Series

Louise Bertrand – February 15

Louise Bertrand,
Product Performance Manager, Widefield, North America
Technology and Application Support Group – Life Science Division
Leica Microsystems

Leica Microsystems LinkedIn

Career Overview:
Louise joined Leica Microsystems in 2008 as Product Specialist Confocal. A year later Louise added the widefield systems; microscopes, cameras, software. She kept interfacing with customers, sales, applications specialists and field service engineers to deeply understand and provide extensive applications and products support. In 2012, Louise switched and took over the Digital Pathology. In 2014 she started to take over the stereomicroscope lines following by the upright microscope portfolio including laser microdissection and today, all the widefield products portfolio including THUNDER and MICA.

Before joining Leica, Louise was Instructor at the Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy at Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA where she taught Medical Neuroscience, managed a core facility and did research on Brain mapping, 3D reconstruction and Image Processing. Louise studied Biochemistry and worked in Developmental Neuroscience, Spinal Cord injury and Neural mechanisms involving functional linking of motor Cortex at Laval University, Quebec, Canada.

Sam Tesfai – March 15

Sam Tesfai
General Manager, Thorlabs Imaging Systems

Career Overview:
Sam completed a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia in 1993. He was introduced to Microscopy when he joined the Lemasters lab at UNC medical school where he was responsible for supporting users and maintaining the imaging equipment. Sam joined Bio-Rad laboratories in 1995 where he worked for 9 years supporting confocal and multiphoton customers across North America. Following a short stop at Zeiss, after the company acquired the microscopy division of Bio-Rad, Sam joined Olympus in 2004 and worked until 2015 where he was a manufacturer’s rep, regional manager and finally VP of sales. He joined Thorlabs Imaging systems in 2015 as the global sales manager until he assumed the role of General Manager in 2020.

Peter Brunt – April 19

Peter Brunt, Sales and Marketing Director at AVR Optics

Career & Talk Overview:
In 2008, after completing a 4 year Masters degree in astrophysics at Leeds University, including a semester of research in Paris, Peter took the decision not to do a PhD and began looking for employment opportunities. He took his first role out of college with a photonics distribution company called Laser 2000, now one of the largest and most successful companies of its kind in the UK. Starting from an inside sales and technical support position, he grew with Laser 2000 until he moved to the US to spin out and establish AVR Optics in 2016.

Peter’s career has not been linear and there have been setbacks. Reflecting on his own career path and that of others, Peter will dig into how our experiences can be translated into transferable skill sets that can form the basis of both personal and professional growth.

Stephanie Fullerton – May 17

Stephanie M. Fullerton, Life Science Marketing Manager, Hamamatsu Corporation

LinkedIn: Hamamatsu | Personal
Twitter: @HamamatsuPhoton | @FiercePhoton (personal)
Website: hamamatsucameras.com

After graduating from the University of Rochester with a B.S. in Biochemistry, Stephanie attended Duke University and obtained a Ph.D. in Neurobiology. While there working on the cellular etiology of Alzheimer’s Disease, Stephanie developed an appreciation for microscopy and image analysis leading to her first post-grad employment as an Imaging Specialist for Nikon. After 2 years with Nikon, Stephanie accepted a position with Hamamatsu Corporation as the Scientific Camera Regional Sales Manager for the Northwest and moved to Northern California. Stephanie now has over 20 years of experience with Hamamatsu and has seen her career evolve from sales to technical marketing to product development and management. Stephanie describes her work for Hamamatsu as a translator as she has learned to effectively communicate the needs of life science researchers to camera engineers and to explain the relevance of camera technical specifications to life scientists. Stephanie enjoys a number of hobbies outside her work including camping, hiking, photography and CrossFit.

Select Publications and Content
Changing the Game White Paper
ORCA-Quest Concept Brochure
A guide to choosing and using scientific imaging cameras. Laser Focus World 50(2):37-40
Optimization of Precision Localization Microscopy using CMOS Camera Technology DOI:10.1117/12.906336

Melody Copenhagen – June 21

Melody Copenhagen, Product Support Engineer, Andor – An Oxford Instruments company

Melody joined Andor Technology in 2009 as a Microscopy Product Support Engineer after receiving her Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Eastern Connecticut State University and an Associate’s degree in Computer Science from Three Rivers Community College in Norwich, Connecticut. Learning Microscopy, Optics, and Electronics on her feet, she continued in this role until 2017, when she moved to a Field Applications Specialist role within Andor, which by then had become part of the larger Oxford Instruments group. In 2018, she accepted a Sales position at GE Healthcare in their Cell Analysis division selling super resolution, deconvolution, and high content microscopes. She continued in that role until 2021 when the Cell Analysis modality was dissolved after being acquired by Danaher. Melody was then welcomed back to Andor to reprise her role as a Product Support Engineer where she installs and supports Andor’s microscopy products for customers across the USA and Canada.

Ons M’Saad – July 19

Ons M’Saad, Co-founder and CEO at panluminate, Inc.

LinkedIn
Twitter
ORCiD
panluminate, Inc.

Ons is a scientist and entrepreneur who is dedicating her career to advancing optical tools for precision medicine. She earned a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Biomedical Engineering from Yale University in 2021, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Biological Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2017. Her research has led to the development of an innovative all-optical toolset called pan-OptiX, which is designed to significantly improve the speed and reliability of biomarker discovery. As CEO and co-founder of panluminate, she is spearheading the capital-raising efforts and driving business growth to successfully bring this transformative technology to market.

Darpan Malhotra – August 16

Dr. Darpan Malhotra, National Sales Director, Carl Zeiss Canada

Darpan completed B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Biotechnology from India and moved to Canada for pursuing his doctoral studies in Biochemistry at University of Alberta. His Ph.D. gave him exposure to complete international trainings in Germany and Singapore and published high impact research articles and reviews. He was the recipient of the prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships along with other research fellowships with a total value of $390,000. Parallel to his Ph.D., he was working as a Consultant for a Chicago-based consulting firm. After completing his Ph.D. in 2019, he started working with Carl Zeiss Canada as an Account Manager for the Research Microscopy Solutions Division and was later promoted to the Director of Sales in 2023.

Matthew Gastinger – September 20

Matthew J. Gastinger, PhD
Principal Application Scientist
Andor, an Oxford Instruments Company

GitHub
YouTube – TheImarisGuy
LinkedIn

I received a Biophysics degree in 1996 from the University of Scranton with minor in Mathematics. I earned both my Masters and PhD in Biomedical Sciences (Neuroscience) from the University of Texas Houston Health Science Center. My research focused on retinal visual neuroscience, primarily focused on primate retinal anatomy using EM and confocal microscopy. This was followed by a short postdoc at Penn State College of Medicine, working with a group studying neurodegeneration in diabetic retinopathy. For short time managed an imaging core facility at the University of North Texas. Then I moved to the large NIH/NIAID imaging facility working with a group of scientists managing/training large user base. Finally, I continue to enjoy my time as part of the Imaris Applications team for nearly 13 years.

Matthias Reuss – October 18

Matthias Reuss
Head of R&D, Head of Marketing
Co-Founder, Abberior Instruments GmbH

I completed a Master’s degree at the University of Texas at Austin and received my PhD from the University of Heidelberg, working on superresolution microscopy in the lab of Stefan Hell. In 2012, during my postdoc at SciLifeLab in Stockholm, Sweden, I founded abberior instruments together with Stefan Hell and six other former colleagues from his lab. Since then, I have held a variety of roles in this company, working in sales, project management, and strategic management. Currently, I’m directing our hardware and software engineering teams as they are developing and improving our microscopes, and I am managing our marketing activities.

Meredith Calvert – November 15

Meredith Calvert,
Associate Director of Microscopy & Image Analysis
Denali Therapeutics

LinkedIn
NIH Bibliography

Meredith is the Associate Director of Microscopy & Image analysis at Denali Therapeutics in South San Francisco, with 15+ years’ experience building and leading bioimaging platforms. She has developed a number of quantitative imaging tools for exploring cellular mechanisms, and throughout her career has been exploring strategies for leveraging and integrating big image data in biological research (morphological screens, whole-organ imaging, high content image data, spatial transcriptomics and proteomics). Dr. Calvert’s Advanced BioImaging team at Denali use light microscopy, in silico analyses, and deep learning approaches to develop translatable biomarkers, explore the biodistribution of experimental therapeutics, and further drug discovery efforts with the larger goal of defeating neurodegeneration.
Dr. Calvert received a B.A. in Developmental Biology from Reed College in Portland and a Ph.D in Microbiology from the University of Virginia. Prior to joining Denali in 2019, Meredith directed Imaging and Biocomputing facilities in both Singapore and at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, taught and led graduate courses and workshops in imaging and cellular mechanisms, and served on committees with the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities and the Western Association of Core Directors. She now serves as a founder and executive board member of BioImaging North America and as liaison to BINA’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Working Group. In addition to her professional life, she has a passion for STEM outreach & education and is an avid scuba diver and underwater photographer.