CV Science

Ignacio CASUSO PhD Physics AFM

Course and current status

• September 2012 – Today. Permanent Researcher Position. Inserm, U1006 Biological AFM Lab, Marseille, France. 

• May 2008 – September 2012. PostDoc.Inserm, U1006 Biological AFM Lab, Marseille, France. HighSpeed Atomic Force Microscopy (HS-AFM) direct visualization of individual and collectivedynamics of untagged biomolecules at individual biomolecule resolution. // Scientific Output: 7publications, 2 book chapters and 2 patents

• Nov. 2002 – Fall 2007. PhD. Dept. of Electronics of the Barcelona University, Spain. Development of the AFM as technique for electrically (DC and AC) characterizing the biomolecules at the nanoscale in the context of the Single protein nanobiosensor grid array SPOT-NOSED project // Scientific Output: 11 publications and 2 book chapters

• May 2001 – July 2002. Scientific Nanotechnology Consultant CMP-Cientifica S.L. Madrid, Spain.

• Sept. 2000 – Feb. 2001. Intership at MEMS department of the Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES), Toulouse, France.

• June 1998 – Sept. 1998. Intership at Cirent Semiconductor, Bell Labs Innovations, Orlando

Scientific summary

I am develeoping the High Speed AFM molecular imaging as a window into the continuous transformation of the supramolecular assemblies of life that opens the possibility of imaging molecules in their functional physiological conditions and studying their mutual interactions. 

In recent years, the number of constituent elements of life was counted though important genomic projects, a firm conclusion was found; Life is made of a reduced number of components (in particular ~30,000 proteins in humans). Therefore, the complexity of life can not be generating from the individual components, but must be generated through the association and interaction of these individual components. Another important aspect of life is its reactivity, for example in humans the average reaction time for a visual stimulus is of hundreds of milliseconds for an immense chain of reactions which include the image processing, the information treatment, the transmission and the mechanical response. Such a fast reactivity requires fast assembly and disassembly of the underlying molecular associations, thus, the associations are easily perturbed and transformed and are generally separated by small barriers of free energy.