Measurement of Cellular Force Generation and Movement

Kevin Burton, PhD

January 26, 2006
CLU - Richter Hall Ahmanson Science Building

This talk presents remarkable work done at Cedars-Sinai in the Minimally Invasive Surgical Technologies Institute in the Department of surgery on understanding cell motion, cell shape changes, cell division, and cell forces in the human body. The brilliance of the work comes from the use of the combination of very innovative technologies (force transducer made of transparent polysolixane, illumination with ultraviolet light, andhigh resolution Optical Imaging). Fascinating movies of cells in action will be shown revealing some interesting information about the forces that cells experience and apply to their environment. 

Kevin Burton, PhD
Minimally Invasive Surgical Technologies Institute,
Department of Surgery, Cedars-Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles

Kevin Burton has a PhD in Biophysics from UC Davis, and a B.A in Biology from Humbold State University. Dr. Burton’s interest is in mechanics and structure-function relationships of the cytoskeleton in single skeletal muscle and nonmuscle cells using quantitative mechanical and optical and imaging techniques. Kevin Burton currently working at the Minimally Invasive Surgical Technologies Institute, Department of Surgery at Cedar-Sinai in Los Angeles. He also worked at the Randall Centre, King’s College in London, Department of Radiation Oncology, at Harvard Medical School, Center for Light Microscopy Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University, and Medical Research Council, at King’s College in London. Dr. Burton is a member of the American Physiology Society, Biophysical Soceity, and the American Society for Cell Biology.