Chris Sharpe, PhD

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Email: chris.sharpe@northwestern.edu

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Personal Statement

Chris is a postdoctoral researcher at NUANCE in both BioCryo and EPIC-FIB, where he specializes in preparing and characterizing biological and soft matter samples by electron microscopy.

As the child of two chemistry professors, Chris was exposed to the nitty gritty details of the complexities of scientific research at a very young age (and at every family dinner). In college, he was encouraged to pursue “any major you’d like – in addition to Chemistry” – he chose Physics with a concentration in Environmental Studies. In his post-graduate work, Chris pursued Materials Science & Engineering, shifting from hard and energy materials synthesis to biomaterials characterization and electron microscopy. He earned his Ph.D., “Unraveling the Web of Challenges Around Understanding How Black Widow Spiders Spin Silk,” from Northwestern’s Materials Science and Engineering department in February of 2025, and moved all the way across the Tech building to NUANCE.

Chris feels most at home approaching problems that he can visualize, be it assembling LEGO sets, building a house on a theater stage, visualizing chiral centers in organic molecules, synthesizing thin film catalysts, producing phosphorescent nanomaterials with a hydrogen rocket engine, swimming in the Conference Championship, mapping the structure of spiders’ silk glands, and/or embedding cells for PFIB reconstruction. With additional certificates in Science Writing and Management for Scientists & Engineers from Medill and Kellogg respectively, Chris draws on a wide range of experience in approaching new problems, and most enjoys finding Occam’s Razor-style solutions to complex problems. Reimbursing prospective students for travel is complicated and collecting all their arrival and departure information is difficult. Let’s have them book travel directly through the department travel agent – we pay for their flights and get their flight information directly, no reimbursements or headaches with Google forms needed! Everyone wins!

With his poorly restrained curiosity, an eye for detail, and a severe caffeine addiction, Chris is happy to schedule a meeting to sit down and discuss your experiment and any BioCryo or FIB questions you might have – preferably over coffee!

Research Objectives and Approach

Research Objectives

• Develop protocols for all stages of 3D reconstruction of biological and soft matter samples using Plasma FIB, from sample preparation through image acquisition and data visualization, for both resin embedded and cryogenic samples
• Developing correlative Light-Electron Microscopy (CLEM) and CLEM-Imaging Mass Spec (CLEM-IMS) workflows
• Technical assistance in preparing and characterizing biological and soft matter samples

Approach

I strongly believe the best way of approaching a problem is finding the best tool or technique for it; of course, when that isn’t readily available, the second best way is to figure out how to adjust or adapt available techniques and instrumentation to achieve similar capabilities as the ideal method. Quite often, the most involved and difficult research problems are stymied by factors that you could not – and did not – predict, regardless of whether you are using the optimal method or an ad hoc method. Therefore it is worth starting the experiment as soon as possible with the tools on hand; as the saying goes, “The Devil is in the details” – so it’s best to start digging into the details of the experiment ASAP, whether that’s with the best approach imaginable or the best approach that is available.

Educational & Research Background