Dr John S H Danial
an assistant professor in experimental biophotonics in the school of physics and astronomy at the University of St Andrews
Dr John S H Danial
Dr John S H Danial
About
Danial is an assistant professor in experimental biophotonics in the school of physics and astronomy at the University of St Andrews. He was a EISAI/UK DRI research fellow in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. He holds a DPhil in Physical Chemistry from the University of Oxford.
Current research
Danial develops state-of-the-art super-resolution microscopes to study the structural organisation of large macromolecular complexes inside biological and human samples. He applies his methods to neurodegenerative diseases (e.g., Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases) to understand the molecular basis of cognitive decline in humans.
Future research vision
Danial aims to push the resolution of light microscopy to a few nanometres, to be able to size protein assemblies with Angstrom accuracy. He intends to apply his method to Alzheimer's disease to image the structure of toxic, disease-causing protein aggregates from human brain and blood. By applying his method as such, he aims to develop his method as a tool for ex vivo structural imaging to rival existing structural determination methods (e.g., Cryogenic Electron Microscopy and the AlphaFold) as well as to the study the structural basis of neurodegeneration in humans.
Key publications

Danial, JSH et al. Constructing a Cost-Efficient, High-Throughput and High-Quality Single-Molecule Localization Microscope for Super-Resolution Imaging. Nature Protocols, 2022.

Danial, JSH et al. Quantitative Analysis of Super-Resolved Structures using ASAP. Nature Methods, 2019.

de Wit, G et al. Dynamic Label-Free Imaging of Lipid Nanodomains. PNAS, 2015.

Key awards

Bye-Fellowship, Homerton College (University of Cambridge).

College Research Associateship, King's College (University of Cambridge).

Research Fellowship, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.

PhD Scholarship, Louis Dreyfus Foundation and Weidenfeld Scholarship Programme (University of Oxford).

MSc Scholarship, Fondation de l'École polytechnique.

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