Sharon G. Wolf 24th Australian Conference on Microscopy and Microanalysis 2016

Sharon G. Wolf

Sharon Grayer Wolf is the Head of the Electron Microscopy Unit at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot Israel. The EM Unit is a centralized core facility, with a staff of 14 (among them 9 PhD-level scientists), including six TEMs, three SEMs, a FIB dual-beam instrument, correlative high-resolution light microscopy, micro-CT and advanced sample preparation instruments. A native of Los Angeles, California, Sharon studied chemistry at UC Santa Cruz, conducting research in marine analytic chemistry. She started her MSc at the Weizmann Institute studying isotope profiles in the Dead Sea, but seasickness and a life-changing core course in X-ray crystallography prompted her to complete her MSc and PhD studies in the laboratory of Prof. Leslie Leiserowitz, where she fell in love with crystallography and structure research. She studied the structures of amphiphilic amino acid surfactants at the air-water interface with the (at the time novel) technique of grazing incidence X-ray diffraction using synchrotron sources. Her postdoc at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory with Dr. Kenneth H. Downing was to study the structure of the protein tubulin, using 2D crystals and electron crystallographic techniques. Together with fellow postdoc Eva Nogales, the three researchers solved the tubulin structure to atomic resolution for the first time. Since 1997, Sharon has been at the Weizmann Institute, where her own research interests are in 3D visualization of cells and macromolecules by electron microscopy. She recently developed, along with her colleagues Michael Elbaum and Lothar Houben, a new way to look at vitrified cells; cryoSTEM tomography, allowing for access to thicker specimens than TEM imaging can provide, along with simultaneous analytic capabilities. Their recent publication on this approach in Nature Methods won the 2014 EMS Outstanding Paper Award in Life Sciences. Sharon lives in Herzliya, near the beach and cultural life of Tel Aviv, with her husband Amnon. They have two grown children.