Mats Gustafsson

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A view of the Janelia Farm Research Campus at dusk.

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Graduate scholar John Tuthill prepares a Drosophila specimen for imaging.

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Graduate scholar Arbora Resulaj (left) and her mentor, Janelia Fellow Dmitry Rinberg (right).

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A virtual arena for the study of flight in insects.

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Research specialist Trevor Wardill (left) and group leader Vivek Jayaraman (right).

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Gustafsson Lab

Group Leader

Mats Gustafsson was a leader in the field of advanced microscopy first at UCSF until 2008 and then at Janelia Farm, where he was a Group Leader from 2008 - 2011.

He created new forms of biological light microscopy, especially modes with higher spatial resolution than is normally allowed by the diffraction limit. He developed ways to bypass this barrier, based on two ideas: (1) structured illumination microscopy, which doubles lateral resolution by illuminating a fluorescent sample with spatially patterned excitation light, causing high-resolution sample information to be encoded into the low-resolution observed image in the form of moiré fringes; and (2) I5M, which improves axial resolution about sevenfold by observing and illuminating the sample from both directions interferometrically, using two opposing objective lenses.

He experimentally demonstrated both methods, and their combination, I5S, as well as a nonlinear extension of structured illumination microscopy.

Dr. Gustafsson passed away in April of 2011. He was 51 years old.