One thing that always lifts my spirits as the nights draw in is the sound of the geese coming south for the winter. Such cheery, chatty birds. (Watch with sound on)

The impromptu celebration lacked champagne flutes for the prosecco, so we had to make do with beer glasses 😂

I'm excited to be co-organising a workshop on Imaging Forces & Mechanobiology in Living Tissues @ Imperial College London, Wed 2 July (with @noelresearchlab.bsky.social & @jvermot.bsky.social). Register here forms.cloud.microsoft/e/hakfMEbgRB by 13 Jun (limited spaces; will confirm acceptance asap)

More adventures with polarised sunglasses: today I learned that ice is birefringent! Beautiful patterns in ice left behind over the top of dried-up puddles - reflections from the lower surface plus birefringent effects (atoptics.co.uk/blog/ice-col...). Presumably requires monocrystalline ice?

When the sun shines, the west coast of Scotland is a great place to live and work. 20 minutes on the train from this front-door view and I'm in the biggest city in Scotland and heading in to a lab filled with talented people 😀🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

I still have these, made by former PhD student Chiara Garbellotto - one for each team member's project. Fluorescent heart, one dual-labelled, one brightfield, one Airy point spread function, one with stripy flow fields 😍🔬🐠💚

It was a pleasure to co-host (with Dr Hasan Abbas) Sahil Sharma, who visited for a year from IIT Delhi on a Commonwealth Scholarship, to work on SIM and photothermal imaging at mid-infrared wavelengths. Sahil was a fast learner in experimental optics, and made great progress on an ambitious project!