Dr Kevin Webb is an Assistant Professor in Applied Optics, in the Optics & Photonics Group of the School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering. Kevin trained at the University of Auckland, New Zealand as an electrophysiologist patch clamping differentiated fibre cells from the ocular lens - a unique tissue which is itself an optical component. Following a post-doc at University College London working on cell differentiation in the retina, he joined the Institute of Biophysics, Imaging & Optical Science at The University of Nottinghamin February 2008, applying surface plasmon imaging and electrophysiology to cultures of primary hippocampal neurons. Kevin was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering/EPSRC Fellowship in 2010 to apply novel imaging and electrophysiological methods to the retina. His current work is using the retinal pigment epithelium as a model system to examine epithelial fluid transport in transparent ocular tissues using a combination of scanning probe microscopy, electrophysiology, and Raman microspectroscopy.

Kevin has an abiding interest in the physiology of transparent tissues of the eye: in particular the cornea, retina, and ocular lens. He was the first to isolate and functionally characterise in vitro the terminally differentiated fibre cells which form the bulk of the ocular lens. His work confirmed at the cellular level the electrophysiological and ion transporting properties of these specialised cells and their role within the connected syncytium which is the ocular lens. Kevin applies novel high resolution imaging and electrophysiological methods to the study of epithelial transport, using model systems which include the cornea, retinal pigment epithelium, lung, and gut. Among the techniques used are confocal laser scanning microscopy, immunofluorescence, optogenetics, scanning ion conductance microscopy, Raman microspectroscopy, and epithelial voltage clamp. Kevin's current work is funded by the BBSRC, entitled "Direct imaging of epithelial fluid transport at the subcellular scale", starting in June 2013.