Ten years ago, Nicolas Bourg was just starting out as a PhD student in a team at Paris-Saclay University developing a 3D single molecule localisation microscopy (SLLM) nanoscope based on supercritical angle fluorescence, or SAF. Today, he is the chief technical officer and co-founder of Abbelight, working in partnership with Evident (formerly Olympus), ‘one of the big four microscopy companies’.
Bourg believes the next step for Abbelight’s researchers is ‘transforming microscopy into SMART microscopy – microscope configuration and imaging modalities which change in function of the sample state, type and structures the user wants to study’.
Top of his list of researchers to watch in the field are Sandrine Lévêque-Fort, Abbelights’s CSO and Bourg’s PhD supervisor, and Professor Emmanuel Fort, Abbelight’s scientific adviser.
‘The biggest challenge’ in SLLM, said Bourg, ‘will be to image live cells’.
You can find Bourg online at twitter.com/Bourg_N or www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-bourg-23121083/. He plans to attend Focus on Microscopy 2023 and Biophysical Society 2023.
Organisation: Abbelight
Role: CTO and co-founder
Based in: Cachan, France
Education: PhD in biophotonics