Current Interests

• Advanced microscopy methods including localisation microscopy (dSTORM), Structured Illumination Microscopy (SIM) and Adaptive Optics microscopy, good practice and standards and their applications to cell biology and the broader life sciences.
• Point of care diagnostics and their application to the detection and monitoring of disease and treatments.
• The development of metrology for the life sciences, including spectroscopic, diagnostic and microscopic methods.

Biography

Alex received his BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Kent at Canterbury in 1990. He then moved to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where his PhD research focused on the molecular biology and biochemistry of myosin molecular motors in plants and animals. After receiving his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1994, he moved to the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, MA, USA, as an EMBO postdoctoral fellow and began an enduring fascination with single molecule biophysics. In 1996 he moved back to the UK and the laboratory of Justin Molloy at the University of York, where he built optical tweezers and single-molecule fluorescence imaging systems to study myosins (again). In 2002, he moved to NPL where he was involved in setting up the new Biotechnology group. Alex is now a Principal Research Scientist and an IUPAC fellow and acts as rapporteur for the CCQM Bioanalysis Working Group.

Selected Publications

• Aptamer-mediated detection of thrombin using silver nanoparticle signal enhancement
  M Szymanski, J Noble, A Knight, R Porter, G Worsley
  Analytical Methods 5(1):187-191 (2013)
• Blind assessment of localisation microscope image resolution
  EJ Rees, M Erdelyi, D Pinotsi, A Knight, D Metcalf, CF Kaminski
  Optical Nanoscopy 1(1):12 (2012)
• Optical scattering artifacts observed in the development of multiplexed SERS nanotag immunoassays
  JE Noble, S Attree, A Horgan, AE Knight, N Kumarswami, RA Porter, GJ Worsley
  Analytical Chemistry 84(19):8246-8252 (2012)
• Bayesian analysis of an international ELISA comparability study
  K Klauenberg, B Ebert, J Voigt, M Walzel, JE Noble, AE Knight, C Elster
  Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine 49(9):1459-1468 (2011)
• Single Molecule Biology
  AE Knight
  Ed. Academic Press (2009)

Contact details

Email: alex.knight@npl.co.uk
Tel: 020 8943 6308