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Kevin Webb

Assistant Professor in Applied Optics and Electrophysiology, Faculty of Engineering

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Biography

Dr Kevin Webb is an Assistant Professor in Applied Optics, in the Optics & Photonics Group of the School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering. Kevin trained at the University of Auckland, New Zealand as an electrophysiologist patch clamping differentiated fibre cells from the ocular lens - a unique tissue which is itself an optical component. Following a post-doc at University College London working on cell differentiation in the retina, he joined the Institute of Biophysics, Imaging & Optical Science at The University of Nottinghamin February 2008, applying surface plasmon imaging and electrophysiology to cultures of primary hippocampal neurons. Kevin was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering/EPSRC Fellowship in 2010 to apply novel imaging and electrophysiological methods to the retina. His current work is using the retinal pigment epithelium as a model system to examine epithelial fluid transport in transparent ocular tissues using a combination of scanning probe microscopy, electrophysiology, and Raman microspectroscopy.

Dr Webb is a member of the Optics and Photonics research group.

Expertise Summary

"A day in the life"

Teaching Summary

Undergraduate courses: H62CET - Contemporary Engineering Themes Undergraduate projects supervised: H53PRJ - Third year project (3rd year, 30 credits, BEng) H14AEP - Advanced Engineering Research… read more

Research Summary

Kevin has an abiding interest in the physiology of transparent tissues of the eye: in particular the cornea, retina, and ocular lens. He was the first to isolate and functionally characterise in… read more

Selected Publications

Undergraduate courses: H62CET - Contemporary Engineering Themes Undergraduate projects supervised: H53PRJ - Third year project (3rd year, 30 credits, BEng) H14AEP - Advanced Engineering Research Project (4th year, 60 credits, MEng) H54IOP - Industrial/Research Orientated Project (4th year, 40 credits, MEng)

MSc Projects supervised in Biology, Biomedical Science, Natural Sciences

Postgraduate courses:

Director: H696 MSc by Research in Biophotonics 4x PhD students (University of Nottingham) 1x PhD (Internationally supervised, with the University of Auckland, New Zealand) 1x PhD (Internationally supervised, with the University of Rochester, USA)

Current Research

Kevin has an abiding interest in the physiology of transparent tissues of the eye: in particular the cornea, retina, and ocular lens. He was the first to isolate and functionally characterise in vitro the terminally differentiated fibre cells which form the bulk of the ocular lens. His work confirmed at the cellular level the electrophysiological and ion transporting properties of these specialised cells and their role within the connected syncytium which is the ocular lens. Kevin applies novel high resolution imaging and electrophysiological methods to the study of epithelial transport, using model systems which include the cornea, retinal pigment epithelium, lung, and gut. Among the techniques used are confocal laser scanning microscopy, immunofluorescence, optogenetics, scanning ion conductance microscopy, Raman microspectroscopy, and epithelial voltage clamp. Kevin's current work is funded by the BBSRC, entitled "Direct imaging of epithelial fluid transport at the subcellular scale", the Leverhulme Trust ("Watching Plants Drink"), and the US National Science Foundation ("Commercialisation of nanoporous SERS biosensors")

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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telephone: +44 (0) 115 95 14081