As a part of her PhD project, Sarah has been wanting to perform CLEM, correlative electron microscopy (specifically with scanning EM), to look at the oocyst wall.
This dates back to the end of Ross’ PhD project… but we struggled to find the right collaborator or facility in the UK. At a Wellcome Trust Discovery Researchers meeting, someone suggested to Mattie that we get in touch with EMBL… so we did! Shout out to Friedrich Frischknecht from Heidelberg for helping us know who to get in touch with to get started!
After preliminary discussions with the EM staff, our scientific proposal was accepted!
Sarah was awarded scholarship funds from Instruct ERIC that supported facility time, travel costs, and sample shipping.
Thanks to the following staff members for their assistance getting the data we wanted! (not listed in order of importance): Georg Wolff, Nadav Scher, Virginia Pierini, Anna Steyer, Manuel Gunkel, Rachel Mellwig, Paolo Ronchi.
Sarah traveled to Heidelberg for a week at the end of 2025, and then a follow-up visit in spring of 2026. All photos below from Sarah Stevens.
Sarah was successful with another proposal for a related, but new imaging project. Again she was awarded Instruct Eric funding, and we are planning for another trip for her to Heidelberg at the end of 2026!
