The University of St Andrews Biophotonics Collaboration is a a platform bringing together scientists from the School of Physics, the Bute Medical School and the Division of Biomedical Sciences to establish an ambitious programme of research at the physics/life sciences interface. It is funded by the EPSRC.

We are an active member of PHOTONICS4LIFE. As a Network of Excellence, PHOTONICS4LIFE aims at providing a coherent framework for the strongly fragmented field of Biophotonics in Europe. One of the challenging tasks of PHOTONICS4LIFE is therefore to structure and integrate the research and technological developments throughout the various subdisciplines of Biophotonics with their manifold interdependences.

ARAKNES is focused on innovative robotic systems for endoluminal surgery. The idea is to develop robotic systems that feature a number of advanced bio-robotic and microsystem technologies that can monitor and operate inside the patient's stomach. The ultimate goal of ARAKNES is to integrate the advantages of traditional open surgery, laparoscopic surgery (MIS), and robotics surgery into a novel operative system for bi-manual, ambulatory, tethered, visible scarless surgery, based on an array of smart microrobotic instrumentation. The St.Andrews contribution focuses on developing novel photonic solutions for the monitoring of tissue health and the detection of malignant tumors. These will be based on either optical fibres or deploy our integrated semiconductor laser and detector technology.

Advanced Techniques for Optical Manipulation using novel 3D light fields (ATOM-3D) is a joint research project comprising 7 European team members - This project is supported by the EC Sixth Framework Programme (project completed 2007).

Wilson Sibbett is the Director of Research at the University of St. Andrews and is a world leader in the development and application of femtosecond laser sources. He is is involved in our work on optical tweezing and laser diode studies.

Thomas Krauss is the head of the Photonic Crystal Research Group in the department. We work with his group on projects involving microfabricated structures, microfluidics and integrated optics

Professor J.W. Allen is a Emeritus Professor at the University of St. Andrews. His long standing research interests include semiconductor light sources and their applications to plant growth. He is involved in our work studying the applications of blue diode lasers.

Ewan Wright works at the Optical Sciences centre at the University of Arizona. He has worked with us on studies of toroidal and Bessel beam dipole traps and waveguides for studies of cold atoms with a view to the examination of low dimensional gases, such as the Tonk's gas. He has recently worked with us on optically bounded matter and optical soliton formation.

Karen Volke-Sepulveda & Sabino Chávez-Cerda both work at the Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica in Puebla, Mexico. They work on studies of optical tweezers and novel light beams, including Bessel beams. They provide some of the theoretical work on our optical manipulation papers.

Tim Freegarde is taking up a new position at Southampton University, where he is starting a new group in quantum control. He previously worked a the University of Trento in Italy. He has collaborated with us on theoretical work relating to cavity enhanced dipole forces.

Gabriel Spalding works at Illinois Wesleyan University, where he studies dynamic holographic optical tweezers and colloid physics. He spent academic year 02-03 working in St. Andrews on a variety of topics and in particular investigating evanescent wave optical tweezing and tweezing with optical arrays.

Photonic Crystal Fibre group at Bath University. The group is working with us to design and fabricate hollow PCF for use in atomic guiding experiments.

We have recently started a project on sonoporation with researchers at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee and at the University of Dundee.

We have recently started a collaboration with Lluis Torner's Group at ICFO in Barcelona. This work will centre on the optical manipulation of particles.