Address: Biological Physics, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Oxford Rd, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK.

                Dr. Thomas A. Waigh graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1994 with a BSc in Physics. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics in 1997 from the Cavendish Laboratory (Cambridge). Subsequently he did a post-doc at the College de France, Paris (2 years) in the laboratory of Pierre Gilles de Gennes (Nobel Prize for Physics 1991). He was appointed to a lectureship grade A in the Polymers and Complex Fluids Group in the Department of Physics of Leeds University in 2000 and moved to a lectureship grade B at the Biological Physics group in the Department of Physics of Manchester University in 2006. He has studied a range of biological systems including: carbohydrates, polyelectrolytes, nucleic acids, proteins, proteoglycans and liquid crystals.  He is a member of both the Biological Physics and Polymer Physics committees of the Institute of Physics. He has published over 50 articles in international peer reviewed journals.

                In the field of quasi-elastic scattering he has successfully built a correlator based optical fiber photon correlation spectrometer (picorheometer), investigated the dynamics of sticky ionomers at the 100ps-10ns range using neutron spin echo, and examined the fast internal dynamic modes (10ns-1000s) of peptides, titin, proteoglycans, and glycoproteins using polarized and depolarized light.  He is involved in the development of new X-ray based speckle experiments and is on the organizing committee of the I13L ‘X-ray Imaging and Coherence’ beam line on the Diamond synchrotron (completion date 2011).

In the field of microrheology his group has performed a series of successful experiments including magnetic tweezer, particle tracking, optical coherence tomography picorheology and diffusing wave spectroscopy. He has written a review on microrheology and has developed the technique in collaboration with Ralph Colby at Pennsylvania State University (USA). Recent experiments using particle tracking technique have allowed live intracellular mechanical spectroscopy experiments to be performed in the frequency range 0.1-40,000Hz using a fast video camera. This allowed individual motions of myosins and dynenins to be observed (~20nm steps) as well as the thermal bending motion of intracellular scaffolding (actins and microtubules). Furthermore studies have been made on intact cardiac thin filaments to examine their self-assembly and elasticity. T.A.Waigh has been involved in two successful projects to build one dimensional and three dimensional magnetic tweezers.

                   Ion-containing polymers: X-ray work on hydrophobic and hydrophobically modified polyelectrolytes has identified new scaling regimes for their structure (Rayleigh charge instability) and viscoelasticity. Random and block ionomers have been studied using a range of neutron, X-ray, light and rheological techniques. Models have been developed to understand the materials’ sticky viscoelasticity.

                   Biological polymers: A chiral side-chain liquid-crystalline model was developed for the physical properties of starch, explaining a series of phenomena including self-assembly and gelatinisation.  This model has now been widely accepted in the carbohydrate community. The dynamics of amyloid type peptides have been examined both internally and in shear flow. The elasticity of muscle proteins (titin and actin) has been studied using scattering and microrheology techniques. A model has been developed for the viscoelasticity of flexible comb polyelectrolytes and applied to the behavior of proteoglycans, glycoproteins and synthetic polystyrene sulphonates. The work on hydrophobic polyelectrolytes has culminated in clear evidence (AFM, TEM, PCS, SANS and rheology) of a multiglobular (dumbbell) structure for MU6 mucin.

                   Live cells: the fluids mechanics and motility of amoeba proteus were examined at high speeds. The life cycle of bacterial thin films has been investigated. Labeled vesicular transport has been studied in Hela cells using fluorescence microscopy and a first passage statistical analysis of individual vesicle motility was made.