The Microbial Super-Resolution Microscopy Lab
CURRENT LAB MEMBERS
Dr. Bill Söderström | Senior Lecturer | ARC Future Fellow | FASM
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Bill leads the Microbial Super-resolution Microscopy Lab at UTS, with a keen interest in a broad range of fluorescence microscopy techniques as applied to imaging bacteria and bacterial infections. Before joining UTS, Bill did a postdoctoral stint at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan (2014-2019), where he used and developed super-resolution microscopy and microfluidics approaches, as well as cryo-CLEM approaches to figure out the inner workings of the bacterial cell division machinery.
He performed graduate studies in Biophysics in the lab of Gunnar von Heijne at Stockholm University (2011-2014). He also holds a M.Sc. in Engineering Physics (Teknisk Fysik) from the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH in Sweden.
Ariana Costas | PhD student
Joint with Dr. Molly Ingersoll at Institut Cochin in Paris
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Ariana completed a Bachelor of Medical Science degree with First-Class Honours at UTS 2022. During her PhD, Ariana is using a cystitis (bladder infection) model in mice and genetically modified UPEC strains to assess the impact of the immune response on antibiotic treatment during urinary tract infections. She will further assess the immune response in female and male animals to understand whether sex differences contribute to antibiotic non-response.
Lachlan Chishlom | PhD student
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Lachlan completed his Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Science at UTS in 2023.
His PhD focus on developing multi-strain UPEC urinary tract infections models to characterise whether different strains of Escherichia coli complement or hinder each other during infection.
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Yiting (Echo) Liu | PhD student
Joint with Dr. Ying Zhu, Fac. of Engineering & IT, UTS
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Echo completed her bachelor's studies in Biomedical Engineering with first-class honours at the University of Technology Sydney. In her PhD she is working on introducing innovative single extracellular vesicle (EV) assays into a clinical setting, aiming to identify early-stage pancreatic cancer with high precision. Her research integrates advanced microscopy technologies such as TIRF with image processing through machine learning to develop and validate biomarkers for early cancer detection.
Diana Marshall | PhD student
Joint with Dr. Maiken Ueland, UTS Forensics
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Diana holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Forensic Studies from the University of Canberra and an Honours degree in Forensic Microbiology from UTS. She is currently working on a collaborative PhD project between AIMI and Forensics in forensic microbiology, comparing and documenting the post-mortem microbiome of human cadavers to develop novel time-since death determination methods.
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Diana is an Elevate Scholar supported by the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.
Meja Petterson | Master's student
Visiting from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.
Joint with Dr. Daniel Mediati, AIMI
Meja completed a Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology at Chalmers in 2023, and is currently in the second year of her Master’s studies. During her master’s thesis at UTS, she will investigate how the urease operon is regulated in a clinical vancomycin-intermediate Staphylococcus aureus strain. Using gene expression analysis and bacterial growth assays in infection-relevant conditions, she aims to understand how SpoVG contributes to bacterial survival in urea-rich and acidic host environments.
Hanna Schagerlund | Master's student
Visiting from the Dept. of Chemistry, Biotechnology, and Health
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.
Hanna completed a Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology at KTH in Spring 2024. She is now in the second year of her Master’s in Medical Biotechnology at KTH and will conduct her master’s thesis in AIMI at UTS, doing a comparative study of antibiotic effects on bacterial growth dynamics across different infection models.
Awesome Honours/Masters student.
You? Join us!
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PAST MEMBERS
Dr. Alaska Pokhrel | Postdoc | ARC Funded 2022-2025
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Alaska completed her PhD in Microbiology in the lab of Prof. Ian Paulsen at Macquarie University, 2022. Alaska is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms of fundamental microbial processes. As a part of the postdoctoral role in the Microbial Super-resolution Microscopy Lab, Alaska used super-resolution microscopy and microfluidics to gain novel insights into the bacterial cell division machinery during infections.
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After Bill's lab:
Research Associate at Macquarie Uni with A/Prof. Amy Cain.
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Emma Gradeen | Master's student | 2025
Visiting from the Dept. of Chemistry, Biotechnology, and Health
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.
Emma performed thesis work as a part of a Master of Science in Medical Biotechnology at KTH, Stockholm. Dividing her time between Dept. of Biochemistry & Biophysics at Stockholm University and UTS, using an in vitro infection model her thesis project focuses on investigating several different stress responses in UPEC during their invasion of human bladder cells. Using fluorescently labelled biosensors, she monitors bacterial behaviour and responses in real time at the single-cell level through fluorescence microscopy.
Rebecca von Essen | Master's student | 2025
Visiting from the Dept. of Chemistry, Biotechnology, and Health
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.
Rebecca completed a Master of Science in Medical Biotechnology at KTH in Stockholm. In the Söderström lab, as part of her thesis work, she optimised an ex-vivo UTI mouse model to study urinary tract infections. Using fluorescently labeled bacteria and confocal microscopy, her research focused on understanding the invasion and morphology dynamics of both pathogenic UPEC and non-pathogenic E. coli in single epithelial bladder cells.​
Nils Forsgren | Master’s student | 2025
Visiting from the Dept. of Mathematics
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
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Nils holds Master’s of Science degree in Applied and Computational Mathematics from KTH.
His work at UTS was in the intersection of forensic microbiology and machine learning, where he established a mathematical model that estimates the postmortem interval of a deceased person based on microscopy images sampled from decomposing cadavers.
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Xintong Yu | Master's student | 2025
Joint with Dr Maiken Ueland, UTS Forensics
Xintong completed her Bachelor's degree in Science (Anatomy) at UNSW in 2023. She is currently working on a collaborative project between AIMI and UTS forensic in forensic biology, aim to get a better understanding of the distribution of various bacteria on different body regions during human decomposition.
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Isabella Wicks | Honours Student | 2025
Joint with Dr Maiken Ueland, UTS Forensics
Isabella has completed a double degree Bachelor of Criminology/Bachelor of Forensic Science (Biology) at UTS. For her Honours degree, she will be working on a project that involves a collaboration between AIMI and UTS Forensics in the field of forensic microbiology, seeking to compare the microbiomes between decomposing humans and pigs.
Dr. Pauline Coulon | Postdoc | 2023-25
Joint with Prof. Garry Myers (Director AIMI)
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As a postdoctoral research fellow in the Australian Institute for Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Technology Sydney, Pauline is passionate about using omics and in-vitro models to answer fundamental biological questions and develop new strategies to combat important pathogens. She is particularly passionate about the role of Burkholderia phase variation during infection.
Dr. Arthika Manoharan | Visiting Postdoc | 2023-24
University of Sydney
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Arthika is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute, University of Sydney and was a visiting researcher with the Söderström Group at UTS. She completed her PhD at USYD under the supervision of Dr. Theerthankar Das, Dr. Greg Whiteley and A/Prof Jim Manos. Her research aims to tackle biofilm formation in recurrent and catheter associated urinary tract infections.​
Ciara Walsham | Master's student | 2024
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Ciara holds Master of Medical Biotechnology from UTS, 2024.
Her thesis examined the difference in protein expression between Escherichia coli rods and filaments in a model UTI. This project also involved optimising microfluidics separation techniques, running UTI infection flow models and proteomics techniques for protein expression analysis.
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After Bill's lab:
Casual academic in the Faculty of Science, UTS
Mona Shahoon | Master's student | 2024
Visiting from the Dept. of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Health, KTH, Sweden
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Mona completed a Master of Science in Medical Biotechnology at KTH in 2024.
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In the Bill, she did lab work as a part of her thesis focusing on investigating the therapeutic possibilities of nano-bodies against UPEC specific proteins.
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After Bill's lab:
Consultant at Zozium in Stockholm, Sweden.
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Matthew Pittorino | PhD student | 2022-24
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Matthew holds a Bachelor of Medical Science degree with First-Class Honours from UTS, 2021.
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During his PhD, Matthew used genetics, single-molecule fluorescence microscopy to gain novel insights into bacterial cell division.
He is currently developing protocols for multi-color single-molecule microscopy for use in bacteria.
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After Bill's lab:
With Iain Duggin, at UTS.
Emma Westlund | Master's student | 2022-23
Visiting from the Dept. of Applied Physics, KTH, Sweden
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Emma completed a Master of Science in Engineering Physics with a profile in Biomedical Physics at KTH in 2023.
In the Bill lab, as a part of her thesis work, she used nano-tags and single-molecule microscopy approaches to develop tools for investigating the cell division machinery in dividing E. coli.
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After Bill's lab:
Microscopy facility staff at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK.
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Charlotte Abell-King | Honours student | 2022
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Charlotte holds a Bachelor of Science in Anatomy and Histology from the University of Sydney and a Bachelor of Biomedical Science (Honours) from UTS.
During her honours year she used microfluidics and fluorescence microscopy to investigate multi-species urinary tract infections and how various bacteria help one another during in an UTI model.​
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After Bill's lab:
PhD student at The Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, AU.
TRAINING
Students that are keen to learn and/or develop their skills in fluorescence based microscopy and microfluidics approaches to study bacteria and their lifestyles are encouraged to contact
the lab to discuss potential research projects. Honours student research scholarships may be
available.​
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Interested postdocs are invited to have a look at the UTS CRF scheme and possibly apply with Bill as sponsor.
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In our lab, integrity, respect and compassion are core values.
We also believe in having fun while doing research!
Contact Bill for a chat if you are interested in joining the lab.
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