Rate My Professor Toby Bell

Toby Bell is an Associate Professor and Associate Head of Education in the School of Chemistry within the Faculty of Science at Monash University. He heads the Bell Fluorescence Lab and is recognized as a senior lecturer in physical and analytical chemistry. His primary research interests encompass the development and application of single molecule fluorescence techniques, especially super-resolution microscopy, as well as time- and space-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy including Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET), energy transfer, annihilation phenomena, photon bunching, and photon correlation. Current investigations include probing off-target effects of anticancer drugs in cells, elucidating how viruses modify and repurpose cellular components and organelles, mapping epigenetic modifications in the cell nucleus, and understanding energy transport in multi-chromophoric dye molecules, polymer chains, and nanoparticles. His work applies fluorescence and laser-based spectroscopy and microscopy to both materials and biological samples, such as microtubules, actin filaments, mitochondria, and receptor clusters, contributing to UN Sustainable Development Goals 3 (Good Health and Well-being) and 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy).

Bell earned his PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2002 in the Ghiggino group, where he studied energy and electron transfer in porphyrin-based donor-acceptor compounds. Subsequently, he completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Radiation Chemistry in Germany, followed by a two-year postdoctoral position at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium with the De Schryver–Van der Auweraer Hofkens group, examining photophysical phenomena in single molecules. In 2006, he returned to the University of Melbourne as a Centenary Research Fellow, and in 2009, he was appointed to the Faculty of Science at Monash University. Bell has received Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Awards in 2017 from both the Faculty of Science and the university. Key publications include “Pediatric glioma histone H3.3 K27M/G34R mutations drive abnormalities in PML nuclear bodies” (Genome Biology, 2023), “Structural insights into the multifunctionality of rabies virus P3 protein” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2023), “Fluorescence modulation of pyridinium betaines: a mechanofluorochromic investigation” (Journal of Materials Chemistry C, 2024), “Design of polarity-dependent immunosensors based on the structural analysis of engineered antibodies” (ACS Chemical Biology, 2023), and “Live-Cell SOFI Correlation with SMLM and AFM Imaging” (ACS Bio & Med Chem Au, 2023).