Meet Josh Gibson, the Beckman Institute's newest microscopist. Josh has been using Microscopy Suite equipment since he began his master's program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2014, and he started his current role as a computed tomography microscopist in January 2023.
Describe your role at the Beckman Institute.
I am responsible for training Microscopy Suite users on various instruments, including microCT and nanoCT scanners, particle sizers, and scanning probe microscopes. I also collect data for users when they do not need or want to learn to use the instruments themselves and troubleshoot when those instruments are not functioning properly.
What is something that people might not know about your position?
I am free to do my own research on the side using the instruments I am responsible for (as long as it does not interfere with users’ research). I am an entomologist, or insect scientist, by training, so I am happy I get to continue using microCT to study insect morphology while at Beckman. Sometimes I will also just scan things for fun when no one is using instruments!
What are you proudest of?
Over the course of my Ph.D. and subsequent postdoctoral fellowship, I managed to visit natural areas on every continent except Antarctica (I was collecting ants for my research on their jaw biomechanics). It might not be a big deal to some, but my family is quite sessile, and we didn’t travel much growing up.
When I was a kid, I would fantasize about studying insects in the rainforest, and I got to do that on multiple continents!
Outside of your professional experience, what are you an expert in? Prove it!
Pokémon! I could list the first 700 or so species by heart. I put over 1400 hours into Pokémon Shield version, which I will admit is a bit excessive. But to be fair, most of those hours were during the height of COVID and there wasn’t much else to do.
When and where are you happiest?
Hiking through a forest, playing a new Pokémon game for the first time, or just hanging out with my close friends.
Who is your hero of fiction? Who is your hero in real life?
I don’t really have any heroes. Nobody’s perfect, and I don’t think it’s healthy to put people on proverbial pedestals. But I suppose that’s a bit of a cop-out answer, so if forced to choose I guess I really admire the accomplishments of Maria Sibylla Marian. She was a 17th century German entomologist and artist who travelled to South America with her daughter in 1699 to study and illustrate insects. She discovered many basic natural history traits of insects, such as caterpillars metamorphosizing into butterflies, that we take for granted knowing about today.
I’ll go with Spider-Man for fictional. Who wouldn’t want to crawl up walls and shoot webs from their wrists?
What is your personal motto?
Do your best.
What is your favorite winter activity?
Going for a nice brisk walk through the snow followed by having a warm cup of cocoa.
