MBL Alumnus Zachary Sanchez Places in 2025 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition with an Image Taken During MBL Physiology Course

Zachary Sanchez, a postdoctoral researcher at the Whitehead Institute and 2024 alumnus of the MBL’s Physiology course placed #20 in Nikon’s 2025 Small World photomicrography competition with an image of a marine copepod, a tiny crustacean.

Sanchez collected the marine copepod in an ocean sample taken during a trip on the MBL’s research vessel The Gemma. Once back in the lab, he fixed the copepod and stained its exoskeleton and nuclei before imaging the specimen on a Hamamatsu fusion camera mounted on a Nikon spinning disc confocal microscope.

“This is my favorite image from the course because the copepod is an organism I would never have had a chance to work with if I hadn’t been at the MBL,” Sanchez explains.

A marine copepods legs imaged under a microscope — Marine copepod legs. Exoskeleton (blue) stained with WGA and nuceli (pink-orange) stained with Hoescht. Imaged on a Hamamatsu's Fusion camera mounted on a Nikon spinning disc confocal microscope during the MBL’s 2024 physiology course. Image credit: Zachary Sanchez

Sanchez’s love of microscopy has been developing for a long time. “Since undergrad, I've been trying to learn as much about microscopy as possible, and then the physiology course was essentially perfect for me in the sense that it’s a sandbox to do multi-disciplinary biology,” he says.

His time at the MBL allowed him to hone far more than his microscopy skills, it introduced him to the MBL alumni community, a network he turned to when it came time to start a postdoc.

“The physiology course opened up a network of people I could postdoc with,” Sanchez explains, “I knew that other alumni think about science in a similar way, with a very creative approach, and are willing to draw from different disciplines in order to answer certain questions.”

While finishing his PhD at Vanderbilt University, Sanchez looked through the syllabus for guest lecturers in MBL courses and found his postdoctoral advisor, Sebastian Lourido, who has lectured in both the MBL’s Physiology and Biology of Parasitism courses. “The MBL community stretches beyond just the campus, and is a wealth of expertise and support,” Sanchez says.

The Nikon Small World exhibit, which features Sanchez’s image, is currently on display at the MBL club.