Sam Humphrey
Main Focus
Structural color spans various kingdoms, from single-celled organisms to plants and animals. Despite their vibrant hues, sea slugs' structural coloration is scarcely studied. At SBM, we examine diverse sea slug clades to uncover their photonic structures using electron and optical microscopy. Our goal is to understand how these structures create brilliant colors. Beyond discovering new nano- architectures, we explore the biogenesis and functional significance of color, imaging its formation and mapping material pathways with tomographic and confocal microscopy. Sea slugs are unique animals, often stealing chloroplasts or toxins from prey, and we're interested in how structural coloration evolved with these processes.
I am particularly interested in:
- Exploring structural coloration and photonic structures in sea slugs
- Understanding how biogenesis drives the vibrant colors in sea slugs
- Investigating the evolution of structural coloration in relation to chloroplast theft and toxin acquisition.
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Sam Humphrey is a postdoctoral scientist in the Department of Sustainable and Bio-Inspired Materials, headed by Prof. Silvia Vignolini, at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces.
Sam did his bachelors degree in materials science at the University of Oxford, followed by his MEng, in the group of Harish Bhaskaran working on phase change materials for optical computing. During this masters project Sam used his novel phase change materials to create structurally coloured phase change displays. During his bachelors Sam spent 3 months at UC Santa Barbara working under Ram Seshadri.
Excited by this work on structural colour and materials science, and spurred by his interest in colour theory and love of the natural world Sam contacted Silvia Vignolini to see if he could combine these interests into a PhD project. Sam spent the first 3 years of his PhD in Cambridge, with field trips to Nantes, Wales, and Grenoble before moving to the MPIKG for the final year of his PhD which he completed in October 2024. Sam’s research interests include structural colour in nature, biomineralization and materials science. He works mainly on the origins of structural colour in marine organisms.