Dr Peter O'Toole

Dr Peter O'Toole is the Director of the Bioscience Technology Facility at the University of York

Dr Peter O'Toole is Director of the Bioscience Technology Facility. The Bioscience Technology Facility covers the broad spectrum of technologies required for a multi-disciplined science wide user based at the University of York along with a significant number of external contracts. These include Data Science, Genomics, Imaging and Cytometry, Metabolomic and Proteomics, Molecular Interactions and Biophysics, Protein Production, with 30 expert staff.

Within the Facility, he has also built up and still heads the highly successful Imaging and Cytometry Labs which includes an array of confocal microscopes, flow cytometers, electron microscopes and novel instrumentation. The Facility is now a flagship EuroBioimaging node, and Zeiss Labs@Location, as well as hosting multiple demo instruments for Carl Zeiss, Beckman Coulter, PhaseFocus and Tomocube for which he has helped design, and BD.

Pete is the President of the Royal Microscopical Society, whilst also an active member on many other international bodies, including CTLS, the Technical Specialists Network, and ELMI and co-Chairs and serves on multiple funding grant panels. Pete gained his PhD in the Cell Biophysics Laboratory at Essex and has been involved in many aspects of fluorescence imaging. Current focus is on both technology and method development of novel probes and imaging modalities including label-free. His lab also provides research support to many academics and commercial organisations, and he has ongoing collaborations and consultancy contracts with many leading microscopy and cytometry companies.

Finally, Pete is also heavily involved with microscopy and cytometry training through a variety of international courses and wider communication via his podcasts ‘The Microscopists’ and ‘Flow Stars’ with over a quarter of a million streams.