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Biography

I was born in Bratislava, then Czechoslovakia and moved to Germany at the age of four, where I grew up. I read Chemistry at St Hugh’s College Oxford until 2002 and did a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley with Rich Mathies in ultrafast spectroscopy before moving to ETH Zurich to work with Vahid Sandoghdar on nano-optics. After returning to Oxford in 2010, I was elected to a tutorial fellowship at Exeter College in 2011 and promoted to Full Professor in 2016. Recent awards include those by the Royal Society of Chemistry (Harrison-Meldola 2011 and Marlow 2015), the European Biophysical Society Association (Young Investigator Medal 2017), a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2018), the Klung-Wilhelmy Award (2018) selection as a UK Blavatnik Awardee (2019), and the Medal for Light Microscopy by the Royal Microscopical Society (2021). I have been supported by ERC Starting, Proof of Concept and Consolidator Grants, as well as Career Acceleration and Leadership Fellowships by the EPSRC. In 2018, I founded Refeyn Ltd, where I am a non-executive director.

Research

We develop new optical methods with applications in biophysical chemistry, molecular biophysics and across the broader life sciences. Currently, we focus on mass photometry, light-scattering-based detection, imaging and mass measurement of single biomolecules in solution. Our goal is to transform our ability to monitor and quantify biomolecular processes – ultimately delivering technologies that enable us to directly observe biomolecules in action. We foster a strongly collaborative approach to research, and are based in the Kavli centre for nanoscale discovery, a highly interdisciplinary environment across departments, disciplines and divisions. Work in our group falls in two major categories: 1. Development of novel optical hardware and analysis approaches to enable new measurement modalities. 2. Application of our methodologies with a focus on mechanistic investigations of biomolecular interactions and assembly.

Teaching

At Exeter I teach all aspects of Physical Chemistry throughout the entire undergraduate degree.

Selected Publications

Young G, Kukura P. Interferometric Scattering Microscopy. Annual Review of Physical Chemistry 2019 70:301-322

Young G, Hundt N, Cole D, Fineberg A, Andrecka J, Tyler A, Olerinyova A, Ansari A,  Marklund EG, Collier MP, Chandler SA, Tkachenko O, Allen J, Crispin M, Billington N, Takagi Y, Sellers JR, Eichmann C, Selenko P, Frey L, Riek R, Galpin MR, Struwe WB, Benesch JLP, Kukura P. Quantitative mass imaging of single biological macromolecules. Science 2018 360:423-327.

Details

Telephone

01865 610544

Website

http://kukura.chem.ox.ac.uk/