Benedict Diederich

After doing an apprenticeship as an electrician, Benedict Diederich started studying electrical engineering at the University for Applied Science Cologne. A specialization in optics and an internship at Nikon Microscopy Japan pointed him to the interdisciplinary field of microscopy. After working for Zeiss, he started his PhD in the Heintzmann Lab at the Leibniz IPHT Jena. He focuses on bringing cutting-edge research to everybody by relying on tailored image processing and low-cost optical setups. Part of his PhD program took place at the Photonics Centre at Boston University in the Tian Lab. A recent contribution was the open-source optical toolbox UC2 (You-See-Too) which tries to democratize science by making cutting-edge affordable and available to everyone, everywhere. He is co-founder of the open-hardware start-up “openUC2” which aims to scale up open microscopy to solve global problems and spend some time during his Post Doc in Manu Prakash’s lab at Stanford University to promote “Frugal Optics” in marine biology communities.

April 2023