About
"Discovery-driven engineering: I develop microfluidic methods for gaining new insights into biological systems"
Research in my lab focusses on the development of high throughput microfluidic approaches for cell and molecular handling. My microfluidic toolkit ever evolves, with droplet, inertial and compartmentalised microfluidic platforms currently being the core technologies in my lab. Allied with these, an open instrumentation approach is used to provide microfluidic workstations in the labs of collaborators. My overall approach involves the development of analytical pipelines coupling the microfluidic processors with state of the art cytometry, imaging, RNA-Seq, mass spectrometry and beam line techniques to deliver high quality data sets enabling new insights into biological systems.
Research
Research groups
Research interests
- Time-Resolved Structural Biology The emergence of serial crystallography brings many exciting possibilities for structural biology but also brings the challenge of preparing many thousands of sub-micron crystals. To address this, we are working with Ivo Tews and Allen Orville to develop high throughput droplet microfluidic systems. Here volumetric confinement of the phase diagram defines growth limits for producing monodisperse protein crystals. Beyond this, the microfluidic processors can be interfaced with the beam line to enable dynamic structural biology.
Research projects
Active projects
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External roles and responsibilities
Biography
Dr Jonathan West is a Lecturer in Biomedical Microfluidics within Medicine at the University of Southampton. His research focusses on the development of microfluidic technologies for cellular and molecular analytics. Jonathan has a multi-disciplinary background, starting with a BSc in Medical Microbiology from the University of Edinburgh, before taking up the challenge of a PhD (“Microsystems for Genetic Diagnostics”) at Tyndall National Institute (formerly NMRC), University College Cork. In 2003, his interest in technology commercialisation led him to the Institute for Nanotechnology Exploitation. Jonathan then moved to ISAS, Dortmund in 2006 to work with Prof. Andreas Manz, pioneer of the micro Total Analysis Systems/Lab on a Chip field. In 2010 Jonathan was promoted to Junior Group Leader with independent research focussed on the development of organ-on-a-chip technologies and microfluidics for dynamic cell biology. In 2012 Jonathan joined the University of Southampton with the goal to extend biomedical science by implementing and innovating microfluidic technologies.