Dr Eric Hanssen is Manager of the Electron Microscopy Unit at the Institute and is a University of Melbourne Research Fellow who is Internationally recognised in the field of extracellular matrix biology for developing advanced electron and atomic force microscopy techniques. He has made several important advances in imaging malaria parasites and several significant contributions to the field. Through his work as a member of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coherent X-ray Science (CXS) Eric has had the opportunity to interact with Physics and Chemistry colleagues in developing fundamentally new ways to image cell architecture using x-rays. He has been at the forefront of these achievements which has required him to communicate the needs of biologist to non-biologists and to develop completely new techniques for preparing samples for x-ray microscopy.

Eric has set up collaborations with Professor Carolyn Larabell (UC Berkeley) and colleagues who have developed an X-ray microscope capable of performing cryotomography on thick samples (several microns) to a high resolution (~ 50 nm) (Advanced Light Source, CA). He has also collaborated with Prof John Sedat (UCSF, CA) on a 'super-resolution' optical microscopy technique called 3D-structured illumination microscopy. These studies represent the first application of these techniques to malaria and one of the first in any system. Dr Hanssen was the first to apply electron tomography to malaria research permitting imaging of components of the parasite export machinery with unprecedented 3D resolution. For this work he developed methods to facilitate immunoelectron microscopy of parasite-derived structures in the red blood cell cytoplasm. These pioneering immunoelectron tomography studies identified several new ultrastructural features including a tethering system and a novel set of vesicles.

Eric Hanssen's Bio 

Eric obtained his PhD at the University of Lyon, France and devoted his first post-doctoral positions to the study of extracellular matrix biology. In 2006 his interest in cell architecture lead him to take up a position with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coherent X-ray Science (CXS) at La Trobe University where he joined a group with complementary high level imaging expertise and began the development of a number of novel imaging techniques for malaria research. He joined Melbourne University and the Bio21 Institute in 2010 to manage and develop the Electron Microscopy Unit. 

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