Sabrina Leslie

Dr. Sabrina Leslie began her academic career at the University of British Columbia, where she studied physics and mathematics (1998-2002) before moving to UC Berkeley as an NSERC fellow to pursue a PhD in optical and atomic physics with Professor Dan Stamper-Kurn (2002-2006). There, she pioneered phase-contrast imaging of phase transitions in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates, developing expertise in instrumentation, microscopy, and experimental physics.

In 2009, Sabrina made a defining transition, from imaging atoms in ultra-high vacuum to imaging biomolecules in solution conditions, motivated by a desire to bring her research closer to life and medicine. As a Mary Fieser Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, she invented Convex Lens-induced Confinement, or CLiC, a solution-phase single-molecule imaging technology that launched a new direction in her research.

In 2012, Sabrina joined McGill University, where she established her first independent research group and developed CLiC into a platform for studying nucleic acids, proteins, nanomaterials, biologics, cells, and other complex systems. She was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2017. A 2018 sabbatical exploring microscopy applications in nanomedicine further strengthened her focus on connecting quantitative imaging with biomedical research.

In 2020, Sabrina was elected to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, and decided to relocate her research program to Vancouver. In 2021, she rebuilt her laboratory at UBC in the interdisciplinary Michael Smith Laboratories and Department of Physics and Astronomy. She received a Killam Accelerator Research Fellowship in 2023 to focus on her scientific program.

Sabrina is also a co-founder of startup company ScopeSys, which is working to translate CLiC technology into real-world applications and has provided career opportunities for Canadian graduates.

Today, her research builds bridges between physics, biology, and medicine, developing new imaging tools to enable discoveries and ultimately advance biotechnology and medicine.