David Sampson's Biography

David Sampson, Head, Optical & Biomedical Engineering Laboratory and Director of the Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation & Analysis, University of Western Australia

Professor Sampson heads the Optical+Biomedical Engineering Laboratory and is Director of the Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation & Analysis, a core facility of The University of Western Australia. He directs the Western Australian nodes of the Australian Microscopy & Microanalysis Research Facility and the National Imaging Facility (Australia). He is a Fellow of the OSA – The Optical Society, of SPIE – The International Society for Optics and Photonics, and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers. Prof. Sampson’s research interests are in the science and applications of light in medicine and biology. His research is focussed on the translation of microscopy techniques to imaging in the living body – medical microscopy. He was awarded the IEEE Photonics Society’s Distinguished Lecturer Award in 2013 for his group’s Microscope-in-a-Needle, which targets surgical and biopsy guidance and is undergoing commercialisation. His emerging work on optical elastography, the microscale imaging of tissue stiffness, shows great promise in breast cancer and skin imaging.