Dr Brian P Jackson is the Director of BNEIR. Brian has 22 years’ experience in Core/Resource management of ICP-MS-based facilities and is an expert in the applications of ICP-MS in Biomedical, Biological and Environmental fields.
Brian graduated from Oxford University (UK) in 1989, with a BSc in Chemistry. He earned his PhD in Soil Chemistry at the University of Georgia (USA) in 1998. Brian came to Dartmouth in 2005 to become Director of the Trace Element Analysis Core and is also a Professor in Earth Sciences.
Throughout his career Brian has used the versatility and sensitivity of ICP-MS as a tool to understand trace element speciation
Dr Tracy Punshon is Co-Director of BNEIR and conducts her own research using elemental imaging. Tracy earned her BSc in Applied Biology in 1992 and a PhD in Plant Biology in 1996 from Liverpool John Moore’s University (UK). Tracy has used synchrotron x-ray fluorescence (SXRF) and laser-ablation ICP-MS extensively, mapping a wide range of environmental and biological specimens, including soil, plants, and human tissues. She has been a frequent user of multiple US synchrotron beamlines since 2000, and is actively involved in method development, analysis and data processing.
Dr Sam Webb is a lead scientist at Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL). He is a longtime collaborator of Drs Jackson and Punshon and a consultant of BNEIR. As a synchrotron beamline scientist for over 20 years, Sam provides valuable advice and input on running an elemental imaging user facility. As the developer of the popular elemental imaging software The MicroAnalysis ToolKit, Sam is working to expand the interoperability of this freely available software so that it can also be used to visualize and analyze data collected via LA-ICP-MS.
Matt Barr is the Research Assistant for BNEIR and helps users in all aspects of preparation, analysis and data visualization. Matt graduated from Middlebury College in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in geology and environmental studies. For his senior thesis he used U-Pb dating and LA-ICP-MS to conduct this research at Middlebury, and prior to joining BNEIR, Matt worked as transmission electron microscopist in Denver, Colorado.
Ramsey Steiner is a research scientist/post-doc for BNEIR. Ramsey graduated from Union College (Schenectady, NY) in 2012, with a B.S. in Chemistry. She earned her PhD in Bioinorganic Chemistry at the University of Georgia (Athens, GA) in 2018 where she focused on small molecule mimics of nickel superoxide dismutates (NiSOD). Ramsey worked as a Lecturer of Chemistry before returning to research at the Trace Element Analysis Core. Her current work focuses on using LA-ICP-MS and metal-based immunohistochemistry (IHC) to spatially resolve metal distribution in biological tissue.
Joshua Levy is the Statistical Consultant for BNEIR: working with users to implement or develop code for spatial statistical analysis of elemental images, specializing in spatial co-registration of elemental data with transcriptomic and immunohistochemical data. Dr. Levy is an Assistant Professor in both the Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Dermatology, with an adjunct appointment in the Department of Epidemiology at the Geisel School of Medicine. Dr. Levy obtained his bachelor’s degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, CA and worked as a software developer at the Joint Genome Institute of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Zymergen, CA. Dr. Levy completed his PhD in the program for Quantitative Biomedical Sciences where he developed technologies to extract insights from DNA methylation and Histopathological slides.
Matt Putnam-Pouliot is a Research Technician at BNEIR. He is currently pursuing a degree in Environmental Sciences. Matt runs the BNEIR sample preparation laboratory as well as conducting LA-ICP-MS analysis.