Lucy Collinson, Science Technology Platform Lead.

Lucy Collinson

Qualifications and history

  • 1998 PhD in Molecular Microbiology, St. Barts and the Royal London Schools Of Medicine and Dentistry
  • 1998 Postdoctoral Research Associate, Imperial College London and University College London
  • 2004 Head of Electron Microscopy, MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, University College London
  • 2006 Head of Electron Microscopy, London Research Institute, Cancer Research UK
  • 2015 Head of Electron Microscopy, the Francis Crick Institute, London, UK

Lucy Collinson leads the Electron Microscopy Science Technology Platform (EM STP) at The Francis Crick Institute in London. She has a degree and PhD in Medical Microbiology, and carried out postdoctoral research with Professor Colin Hopkins at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology (UCL) and Imperial College London, investigating membrane trafficking pathways in lysosome-related organelles in mammalian cells using light and electron microscopy as key techniques.

She has 11 years experience in running biological EM facilities, first at UCL and then at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute, which became part of the new Francis Crick Institute in 2015. With a team of seven electron microscopists and two physicists, she oversees more than 100 research projects with more than 50 research groups within the Crick, imaging across scales from proteins to whole organisms.

Her microscopy and technology development interests include volume EM, correlative imaging techniques, cryo-microscopy, X-ray microscopy, image analysis, and microscope design and prototyping. In the last year, she has co-authored 16 publications, given 15 international plenary and invited talks, and sits on six national and international scientific advisory boards and expert review panels.