About
The Integrated Cellular Imaging (ICI) core provides state-of-the-art light microscopy and image analysis technology. We offer confocal and live cell imaging, multi-photon animal and tissue imaging, widefield with deconvolution, super resolution, and image analysis. To effectively implement these technologies, we provide consultations, expert training, and support for all our systems.
Along with providing access to equipment, another goal of ICI is to serve as a nucleator for the cell imaging community at Emory. We want to unite diverse microscopy interests, allowing investigators to share ideas, expertise, and instrumentation. Developing new imaging techniques and acquiring new cutting-edge equipment are central to our mission to serve the Emory community.
The members of our ICI core have a wide breadth of interests and experience in translational neuroscience, basic cell biology, cancer biology, nanotechnology, immunology, pharmacology, and microscopy technique development.
Contact us at ici@emory.edu about your microscopy needs or interests today
Core Leadership
Laura Fox-Goharioon
Core Director
Office: Whitehead Biomedical Research Building, Room 405F
Laura received her degree in Biology at Georgia Southern University where, as an undergraduate, she was trained in scanning electron microscopy, both sample prep and imaging. She then came to Emory University to work in the lab of Dr. Winfield Sale, in the Department of Cell Biology, where for 27 years she studied the molecular motor dynein and how it is regulated. Along with many lab techniques, she has experience in light microscopy techniques including dark field, phase contrast, DIC, and fluorescence microscopy, as well as both SEM and TEM. Laura has been training scientists, from undergraduates to post docs, and trouble-shooting equipment for 39 years at Emory and is looking forward to working with you on the microscopes.
Michael Koval, PhD
Scientific Director
Office: Whitehead Biomedical Research Building, Room 235
Michael Koval is Professor of Medicine and Cell Biology, with a appointments in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine and the Department of Cell Biology. Prior to becoming Scientific Director, he was a long-standing member of the ICI Faculty Advisory Committee. The Koval laboratory uses state of the art imaging methods, including quantitative super-resolution fluorescence microscopy and live cell imaging, to study the molecular regulation of intercellular junctions and to determine how they are disrupted in lung diseases, including acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and cystic fibrosis..
Koval Lab website
Integrated Cellular Imaging Team
Contact us at ICI@emory.edu about your microscopy needs or interests today
April Reedy, PhD
Technical Director
Office: Health Sciences Research Building II (HSRB II), Room S310
Phone: (404) 227-3210
April is a developmental biologist, completing her Masters and PhD work with C.elegans. She received her Master’s degree at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan and her PhD atUniversité Claude Bernard Lyon 1 as well as École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France. Aprils graduate studies centered on muscle development and pathogenesis in models of Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy. During her post-doc she worked with Drosophila intestinal proliferation in response to probiotics with Andy Neish and Rhenaillt Jones in Emory’s Pathology and Pediatrics departments. April has a passion for the beauty of microscopy and specializes in whole animal mounts of transgenic animals. She looks forward to helping people get gorgeous publishable pictures that are easily translated into data for image analyses and quantification.
Stoyan Ivanov, M.Sc
Bioinformatics Analyst
Office: Whitehead Biomedical Research Building, Room 465M
Phone: (770) 380-2922
Stoyan is a Physicist who completed his undergraduate and Masters degrees at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His graduate work focused on the interaction between Mercury’s magnetic field and the incident Solar wind during Coronal Mass Ejections that passed through the near-Mercury environment under Dr. Carol Paty. He studied how these plasma conditions affected the incidence of ion precipitation on the surface and how that relates to surface weathering. Stoyan has had experience in a wide range of fields including radioastronomy at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, space plasma modeling during his graduate work, and biomedical engineering at Sorrento Therapeutics Inc. He is excited to apply his previous experiences to the cell imaging work of the core, help other researchers with their studies and imaging, and learn a great deal along the way.
Contact Stoyan for inquiries about the Lattice Light Sheet Microscopy (LLSM), STimulated Emision Depletion (STED) super resolution, image analysis, or taking quantifiable images.
Hunter Hakimian, PhD
Assistant Scientist
Office: Health Sciences Research Building I (HSRB I), Room E-G21
Phone: (904) 343-7315
Hunter is a Neurobiologist who, after receiving his undergraduate degree in Physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, received his PhD at the University of Florida in the J Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering in the Neuroprostheses Research Lab under Kevin J. Otto as well as the Department of Pathology under Clive Wasserfall where he studied novel intracortical microstimulation techniques and the persistence of single beta cells in type 1 diabetes patients, for which he employed automated computer vision techniques and big data processing. He also made use of big data techniques for the UF HuBMAP chapter, where he formatted and uploaded large human microscopy datasets to both UF’s local supercluster and the global HuBMAP Atlas. He has extensive experience with machine learning, cloud data sharing and neural engineering and looks forward to sharing that knowledge in pursuing the development and facilitation of biological research methods with the diverse users of the ICI core.
Mark (Shaojin) You, PhD
Assistant Scientist
Office: Whitehead Biomedical Research Building, Room 465
Phone: (770) 324-7117
Mark earned his Ph.D. in Pathophysiology from Central South University in Hunan, China. He furthered his academic pursuits by completing post-doctoral training in oncology at the University of Minnesota Medical School and male endocrinology at the University of South Carolina. During his early research career, he focused on investigating the impact of dysfunctional gap junctions and disrupted biological rhythms on controlling breast cancer growth. Additionally, Mark dedicated approximately ten years as a research pathologist of the histo-pathology core at Atlanta VA Medical Center, offering valuable histological and pathological services to the research community. In 2018, Mark transitioned to The Center for Molecular & Translational Medicine at Georgia State University, where his research centered on cell-to-cell communication through membrane nanotubes, with a specific emphasis on ovarian cancer. He is excited to join Emory Imaging Core, where he eagerly contributes his expertise in cell imaging and supports fellow researchers in their own studies.
Harold (Hai) Vo, PhD
Assistant Scientist
Office: Winship Cancer Institute Building C, Room 4060 Bench 19
Phone: (404) 981-3821
Hai is a cellular & molecular neurobiologist who earned his undergraduate degree in biology from Georgia State University and his Ph.D. in neurobiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His graduate research focused on examining the role of an age-regulating protein called klotho in neuronal function. A key aspect of his research included the analysis of 3D reconstructed neuronal dendrites and synaptic spines generated from confocal image stacks of hippocampal neurons. Following graduate school, Hai spent several years in biotech as a senior scientist and business development specialist where he served as a consultant assisting his clients with the development of their preclinical candidate therapy R&D programs. Hai is passionate about helping scientists advance their research programs and is eager to lend his expertise to the users of the ICI core.
