Bridget Carragher

Bridget Olivia Carragher (born 17 June 1957) is a South African physicist specialized in electron microscopy.

Carragher is an adjunct professor at the Columbia University (New York City, NY) and the founder and Chief Operations Officer of NanoImaging Services, Inc. She is also the director of the National Resources for Automated Molecular Microscopy (NRAMM), director of the Simons Electron Microscopy Center at New York Structural Biology Center (New York City, NY) and PI at the National Center for CryoEM Access and Training.

Personal life
Carragher was born in South Africa. She lived in Ghana during her childhood and for one year in England. After earning her master's degree, she moved to the United States and has lived there since where she is a US citizen.

Carragher is married and has two children.

Education
Carragher studied physics at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, from 1975 to 1981. She spent a year at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, and graduated with a MSc in physics. In 1987 she gained her PhD in physics from University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.

Career
Carragher has spent much of her career in developing streamlined and automated electron microscopy (EM) methods aimed at improving both the quality of EM data and the accessibility of these techniques to the broader biological community.

After her Ph.D., she held several posts in industry and academia until moving to the Scripps Research Institute in 2001. Since 2002, she has served with Clint Potter as the director of the National Resource for Automated Molecular Microscopy (NRAMM), an NIH-funded national biotechnology research resource. The NRAMM specializes in developing and applying automated technologies for EM and providing training at all levels.

In 2007 Carragher co-founded NanoImaging Services, Inc. The company works in the area of providing microscopy services to the biopharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

In 2015 Carragher and Clint moved their academic lab from The Scripps Research Institute to the New York Structural Biology Center, where they serve as co-directors of the Simons Electron Microscopy Center. In May 2018, they were awarded a U24 grant to start the National Center for CryoEM Access and Training (NCCAT).

In 2022 she was named a Founding Technical Director of the Chan Zuckerberg Institute for Advanced Biological Imaging.

Contribution to Science
Throughout her career, Carragher has published 165 papers, received several research funding grants and owns five patents.

Patents

 * Smith PE, Callahan MP, Daniel I, Potter CS, Carragher B, Suloway CJ, inventors; Robotic system for sequencing multiple specimens between a holding tray and microscope. 2005, US 2005/0107917 A1.
 * Mulder A, Carragher B, Potter CS, inventors; Characterization of particulates using electron microscopy and image processing methods. 2011, Provisional. Filed 8/17/2011.
 * Carragher B, Potter CS, Jain T, inventors; Preparation of specimen arrays on an EM grid. 2012, Provisional. Filed 1/17/2012.
 * Carragher B, Potter CS, Jain T, inventors; Superhydrophilic specimen grids for electron microscopy. 2012, Provisional. Filed 1/17/2012.
 * Carragher B, Potter CS, Jain T, Kahn P, Wiktor P, inventors; Apparatus and method for producing specimens for electron microscopy. 2012, Provisional. Filed 1/17/2012.

CryoEM automation
Carragher was an early advocate for automated methods for electron microscopy. She developed software to analyze poorly ordered sickle cell hemoglobin fibers and went on to collaborate with Ron Milligan's group to develop a pipeline for helical processing (Phoelix). Carragher and Potter led the development of Leginon, a system for automated control and data acquisition from an electron microscope, and Appion, a pipeline for single particle data processing.

New technologies for TEM
Carragher and her team have developed a number of technologies for transmission electron microscopy (TEM). These include Spotiton, an inkjet dispense and vitrification system for cryo-TEM, robotic devices to load TEM specimens into the microscope, liquid handling robots for controlling sample vitrification  and negative staining, and new substrates.

Contributions to structural biology
Carragher has co-authored several papers in this area.

Carragher's lab team includes a number of post-docs and graduate students. These researchers have contributed a number of papers to scientific journals.

Contributions to Methodology:
Carragher has worked to validate and improve methods in the field. In particular, she has worked on a particle picking workshop, the recent CTF challenge and a number of workshops organized by the EMDB to discuss standards and validation. She have also organized workshops, including the NRAMM biennial Advanced Methods Workshop.

Awards
In 2019, Carragher and Philip E Bateson were awarded the 2019 Microscopy Society of America Distinguished Scientist Award.

In 2022, Carragher was awarded The Biophysical Society Innovation Award.