Achievement

Patrick J. Cutler has won the 2011 Student Research Achievement Award at the Biophysical Society 55th Annual Meeting held in Baltimore, Maryland March 5-9, 2011 for his poster presentation on “Single Particle Tracking of QD-IgE in Hyperspectral Fluorescent Images”. His travel to the conference was covered by the INCBN IGERT program. The main goal of Patrick’s research is to gain a better understanding of membrane protein dynamics. His approach involves single particle tracking of membrane proteins labeled with quantum dots (QDs), and high-speed hyperspectral line scanning microscopy. In the award-winning poster, the hyperspectral line scanning microscope and single particle tracking algorithms are demonstrated with experiments of QD-IgE bound to Fc(epsilon)RI on live cells. The IGERT program has provided Patrick with the opportunity to work in a very interdisciplinary environment of cell biology and biophysics.