Suliana Manley
Suliana Manley (born 1975) is an American biophysicist. Her research focuses on the development of high-resolution optical instruments, and their application in studying the organization and dynamics of proteins. She is an associate professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and heads the Laboratory of Experimental Biophysics. Career. Manley studied physics and mathematics at Rice University where she received a Bachelor’s degree (cum laude) in 1997. She joined Harvard University and in 2004 graduated with a PhD in physics under the supervision of Dave A. Weitz. She then went to work as a postdoctoral researcher on  lipid bilayer and red blood cell membrane dynamics with Alice P. Gast at MIT. In 2006, she joined the cell biology laboratory of Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz at the National Institutes of Health as post-doctoral fellow. Here she developed an optical method (sptPALM) enabling the study of the dynamics of large ensembles of single proteins in membranes and inside cells. In 2009, she became an assistant professor of physics at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, and was promoted to associate professor in 2016. She is the founding director of the Laboratory of Experimental Biophysics. Recognition. In 2019, Manley was  awarded the Medal for Innovation in Light Microscopy by Royal Microscopical Society. In 2020, she was elected as an APS (American Physical Society) fellow. Research. Manley's research group is invested in the field of high-resolution optical instruments and in the investigation of complex biological systems. They develop and deploy automated super-resolution fluorescence imaging techniques combined with live cell imaging and single molecule tracking. Their aim is to determine both the dynamics and the spatial distribution of protein assembly. They are also interested in the information transduction across cell membranes and therefore investigate the assembly dynamics of membrane -bound receptor. Their main research topics involve: