Mr Matthew John Lawson
Senior Research Assistant in Mechanical Engineering
Matthew J Lawson is a Senior Research Asssitant in Mechanical Engineering within Engineering at the University of Southampton.
My PhD project was a 4 year MRC-CASE studentship with Nikon X-Tek Systems Ltd. The PhD project focussed on correlative imaging of human lung tissue using micro-computed tomography (µCT) and immunofluorescence (IF) microscopy. I developed a semi-automated workflow for processing the large amounts of image data captured using these techniques. This involved developing registration techniques to digitally match the information from 2D IF sections to 3D µCT volumes. The developed correlative imaging workflow was applied to clinically relevant lung samples (from control and mild-moderate COPD patients) to investigate changes in the 3D networks of blood vessels as well as pathophysiological relevant cell types. This used co-registered IF images for cytokeratin-18, a structural protein found in the airway epithelium, mast cells and macrophages. These were visualised and analysed using both open source and commercially available software to calculate the distribution of cell types in relation to the tissue volume and the identified 3D network of blood vessels. A manuscript detailing the methodology is currently submitted for publication. Alongside this I have supervised undergraduate Medicine students on their 3rd year respiratory science projects, presented my work at several conferences; including organising and teaching part of a correlative imaging workshop at the 2019 ToScA conference in Southampton, collaborated with external researchers working with different imaging modalities and undertaken outreach work. Now I work within the 3D X-ray Histology (XRH) group, a part of µ-vis in the faculty of engineering and physical sciences at the University of Southampton. Main roles include applying techniques and knowledge developed during my PhD (detailed below) to projects both from interior and exterior collaborators. As well as assisting the XRH team in writing publications and developing a data repository for users of the XRH facility.
Qualifications
BSc, Biomedical Science, Cardiff University, 2014
MRes, Biosciences, Cardiff University, 2015
PhD (pending corrections), University of Southampton, 2021