Rate My Professor Liisa Hirvonen

Dr. Liisa Hirvonen serves as Senior Lecturer in Optical Microscopy and Platform Leader for the Optical Microscopy section at the Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis (CMCA) at the University of Western Australia. She earned her PhD in Physics from King's College London in 2008 and her BSc in Physics with Computer Science from the same institution in 2005. As an experimental physicist and biophysicist, Hirvonen's research centers on all aspects of optical microscopy. Her expertise includes specialised fluorescence microscopy methods such as super-resolution microscopy, lightsheet microscopy, and fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM). She pursues novel imaging solutions that extend beyond conventional techniques and develops correlative and multimodal workflows that integrate optical microscopy with other imaging modalities, including electron microscopy, μCT, and nanoSIMS. Her research keywords encompass optical microscopy, fluorescence microscopy, FLIM, super-resolution, photon counting, cell imaging, correlative microscopy, cell biology, and correlative light-electron microscopy (CLEM).

Prior to joining CMCA in 2019, Hirvonen held postdoctoral positions at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and King's College London, UK, where she advanced novel super-resolution and time-resolved fluorescence microscopy methods. During this time, she gained extensive experience with multiphoton microscopy, total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF), lightsheet microscopy, atomic force microscopy, various super-resolution techniques, and FLIM. At UWA, she oversees all CMCA optical microscopy equipment, delivers training, and provides ongoing support to users from diverse disciplines. Key publications include "Lightsheet fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) with wide-field time-correlated single photon counting (TCSPC)" (Journal of Biophotonics, 2020), "Fast Timing Techniques in FLIM Applications" (Frontiers in Physics, 2020), "Artifact-free high-density localization microscopy analysis" (Nature Methods, 2018), "Wide-field TCSPC: Methods and applications" (Measurement Science and Technology, 2017), and "How did correlative atomic force microscopy and super-resolution microscopy evolve in the quest for unravelling enigmas in biology?" (Nanoscale, 2021). She represents Western Australia for Light Microscopy Australia and the Australia and New Zealand Society for Cell and Developmental Biology (ANZSCDB). Her scholarly work has accumulated over 2,300 citations.