Northern Light Microscopy

Following last week, meet Ralf, our CTO. Ralf is, by training, an electrical and mechanical engineer who received his PhD working in optical design and MEMS enabled laser systems in 2013. In 2016 he was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship to develop miniaturized microscopy systems and has become an Academic and Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor at the University of Strathclyde researching various microscopy techniques. Ralf’s knowledge is critical to our patent-pending technology and innovation plans. He’s a man of many talents as the OEM engineer, resident firmware coder, dabbler in mechanical and electrical CAD and more. Ralf also enjoys the outdoor life, going hiking in the Scottish Hills or walking along the nearby Scottish West Coast beaches with his partner and dog.

We're hiring! We're looking for a Software Engineer to join the team, if you think that could be you find the details on the webpage linked. If you don't think that's you but you know someone it could be... it's always nice to pass on a message about a brilliant opportunity!

We’re taking time to reflect and strategize, you’d think as a small company we’d all be on the same page all the time but life runs pretty fast here! We usually grab a coffee once a week to make sure we’re all up to speed with what is happening and continue working toward our common goal, so it only makes sense we do that at an even larger scale to plan for the new year. We’re expanding! If you think you’d enjoy working with us, keep your eyes peeled for our job advert for a software engineer in the next couple of days!

It’s time for introductions! Peter, our CEO, is a microscopist by training. He got his PhD in 2019 (funded by CoolLED) after developing novel super-resolution techniques and imaging hardware as part of the Centre of Biophotonics at University of Strathclyde, Peter then went on to do various postdocs in microscopy before working with Ralf to develop the technology behind our microscopes. Peter’s unique background straddling the life sciences and microscopy led to him to, as he’d say, do himself out a job by making the super-resolution systems more accessible to those who don’t have PhD’s in microscopy.    Much more excitingly, Peter used to be a below average rugby player (his words), scream and strum in a middling math rock band and has an above average dog (Gimli). Peter can usually be found with the said dog in and around the pubs of Glasgow. 

Congratulations to the 37 winners of this year's Scottish EDGE receiving more than £1.5M in total in the 24th awards ceremony that took place last week Wild Card Winners * B&B Cart˘ns - £10,000 – Edinburgh - Developing Scottish animation, leveraging international co-productions and expanding into merchandise, books and games. * Digitech Innovation, trading as #beeline - £10,000 – Edinburgh - A digital self-assessment for patients with muscle and joint conditions, partnering with healthcare organisations who require this digital content. * #Elansu - £15,000 – Glasgow - Designs and manufactures sports bras specifically engineered for fuller-bust, small-band women. * HUID - £10,000 – Oban - Food preserving, home compostable alternatives to single use plastic food packaging using onion skins. * #Kinteicolor - £10,000 – Glasgow - Software that enables scientists to use any camera as a non-contact process monitoring tool. * Kyle McPherson (Ailsa Reliability Award) - £10,000 – Oban - Seaweed Services is a company focused on revolutionising the seaweed farming and processing industry. * Northern Light Microscopy - £10,000 – Glasgow - Letting life-scientists to make the bioscience discoveries of tomorrow by democratising access to advanced microscopy. * #PRODISPENSE - £10,000 – Stirling - A protein machine that dispenses a smooth blend of protein and other key supplements, such as creatine. Find out more via Insider https://lnkd.in/eJKfuCFb #EDGE24 #ScottishEdge #Entrepreneurship #InnovationAwards #StartupScotland #SocialEnterprise #ScottishBusiness #BusinessGrowth #AwardsCeremony

Now that we’ve had enough time, we had our Christmas night out last week. We got to enjoy some amazing time with the people we share lab space with. Couldn’t ask for better people. It couldn’t have been said better than by our own Ralf; we can’t wait to see how we grow and how many people are joining us from NLM next year. For now it’s Ralf, Peter (CEO) and Becca (Senior Systems and R&D Engineer), a brilliant team.

We’ve been very busy this week. Yesterday marked the start of our journey with STAC Scale, a Glasgow based tech accelerator that we’re very excited to work with to grow the business at scale. Our CEO and CTO, Peter William Tinning PhD and Ralf Bauer, then sped off to Edinburgh for the Scottish EDGE Awards Ceremony. And we are happy to celebrate that we are one of the winners of this year’s Scottish Edge Wild Card!

Our CEO, Peter, has been busy networking including fireside chats and learning about fundraising with the Pioneer Group at Victoria house. Pioneer Group have been busy working on new lab space for hire in a prime location and also support business owners by giving them space to network with others. 

Great first trade show outing for Northern Light Microscopy ... plenty of good conversations and more things to come.

Excited for a great day showcasing our product at our first trade show as part of the Scottish Microscopy Symposia 2024!