Welcome to the website for the Optical Manipulation Group at the University of St Andrews

The Optical Manipulation Group works in a variety of research areas of optical physics and biophysics.  Our research is focused on the development of optical micromanipulation techniques, the investigation of novel light fields, the characterisation of particle dynamics (at the atomic, nano, and micron scale) in optical light fields and the exploration of novel optical imaging techniques for biology and medicine.  The group is headed by Kishan Dholakia, and consists of an international mixture of multi-disciplinary research staff and PhD students.

We are based in the School of Physics & Astronomy, and part of the Centre of Biophotonics and the Sir James Mackenzie Institute for Early Diagnosis. Our work has generated several commercial projects, such as the Elliot Scientific Optical Tweezer range and the M-Squared Aurora microscope. Our research is presently funded by a number of sources, including the UK EPSRC, the European Union Framework 7 programme, the EU Horizon 2020 Programme and the Leverhulme Trust. 

We are always delighted to hear from potential new postdoctoral staff, postgraduate students and summer interns – please contact Prof Kishan Dholakia with informal enquiries.

Recent research highlights