Falk Schneider

Falk Schneider is an Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick, where since March 2025 he leads the Fluorescence and Membrane Dynamics (FMD) Lab. He is part of the Centre for Mechanochemical Cell Biology (CMCB) and the Cellular Interfaces Cluster, bringing together cell biologists, developmental biologists, and microscopists to understand membrane organization in fundamental biological processes.

Dr. Schneider completed his Bachelor and Master studies in Biochemistry at Leibniz University in Hanover, Germany, beginning his scientific journey in 2010. He earned his PhD at the University of Oxford in the Eggeling Lab, which he joined in October 2015 and defended in January 2020. Following his PhD, he conducted postdoctoral work at the Fritzsche Lab for Biophysical Immunology at the University of Oxford and later at Scott Fraser's lab in the Translational Imaging Center at the University of Southern California (USC).

His research centers on the development, advancement, and application of fluorescence microscopy and spectroscopy methods to quantitatively study cellular and sub-cellular dynamics. Dr. Schneider specializes in fluorescence fluctuation spectroscopy (FFS), particularly fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) in conjunction with super-resolution stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy. His work focuses on plasma membrane organization and signaling, biophysical imaging with smart probes like the Flipper tension probe, and computational simulations and data analysis using open-source Python programming. A significant portion of his recent work involves studying molecular interactions in physiological contexts using zebrafish as a model system.

His publication record demonstrates expertise in quantifying biomolecular organization in membranes, with recent work on brightness-transit statistics (BTS) methodology that simultaneously measures diffusion dynamics and oligomerization. His research bridges advanced imaging techniques with fundamental biological questions about membrane organization in immune cells and developmental processes.

Dr. Schneider has established strong technical expertise in both in vitro model membrane systems and in vivo applications, with a particular focus on making advanced quantitative imaging techniques more accessible to the broader research community through open-source software development and methodological tutorials.