DrPeriklis Pantazis

BIO

Dr Periklis “Laki” Pantazis is Reader in Advanced Optical Precision Imaging, equivalent to Associate Professor, in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London, and Director of the Imperial College London–Leica Microsystems Imaging Hub, a strategic partnership advancing optical imaging technologies for research and innovation.

He studied Biochemistry at Leibniz University Hannover, Germany, and completed his PhD in Biology and Bioengineering at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden. He then pursued postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology before joining the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich as Assistant Professor of Biosystems Analysis. In 2018, he moved to Imperial College London, where he established the Laboratory of Advanced Optical Precision Imaging and was awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.

His laboratory develops advanced imaging technologies that integrate molecular probes, imaging modalities and quantitative analysis to visualise and interpret biological processes across scales. Key contributions include confined primed conversion for precise single-cell labelling and lineage tracing, biodegradable bioharmonophores for high-resolution in vivo tumour imaging, and GenEPi, a genetically encoded reporter for non-invasive imaging of Piezo1-dependent mechanosensing. These technologies are applied to mechanistic studies of development, regeneration and disease in systems including zebrafish, mouse embryos, organoids and tumour models, with the longer-term aim of enabling novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies.

Dr Pantazis’ work has led to high-impact publications in journals including Science, Nature Methods, Nature Communications and ACS Nano, multiple patents and patent applications and more than £7.8M in research and infrastructure support.

His contributions to microscopy and imaging have been recognised by the Royal Microscopical Society Scientific Achievement Award and the Addgene Blue Flame Award for widely shared plasmids.

More information can be found on the Pantazis Lab webpage.