Light is a versatile tool for imaging and engineering on microscopic scales. Optical microscopes use focused light so that we can view specimens with high resolution. Such microscopes are widely used in the biomedical sciences. Similar optical systems are used in optical data storage applications, such as CD or DVD systems. However, focused light has other less well-known uses. It can be used to initiate chemical reactions that create polymer or metal building blocks for fabrication on the sub-micrometre scale. Alternatively, high intensity lasers can be used to shape objects, by melting or vaporising small regions of material, effectively carving a structure into shape. Light has another useful property, in that it exerts forces as it passes through objects. Although these forces are minuscule, they are sufficient to move small objects in the focus of a microscope. Such ‘optical tweezers’ have been used to control and sort particles and even to manipulate living cells.

Dr Booth read for a degree in Engineering Science at Hertford College, Oxford, from 1993-7. Following this he spent three months at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen, Germany, researching methods for multi-photon microscopy. His doctoral work in adaptive optics for confocal microscopy took place in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford from 1997-2001, during which time he was also a member of Jesus College. In 2001, Dr Booth was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Christ
Church and in 2003 was appointed a Royal Academy of Engineering/EPSRC Research Fellow. He teaches undergraduate courses at Christ Church and also at Hertford College.