Paul Verkade has been working in the field of microscopy from the start of his scientific career and, over the last 15 years, has established himself as one of the leaders in the field of correlative light electron microscopy (CLEM). As a champion of correlative microscopy and passionate about training the next generation of microscopists, he has taught and organised numerous Royal Microscopical Society (RMS) courses, among others, including four European Molecular Biology Organisation practical courses on CLEM in Bristol. He has edited five books on correlative microscopy.

Verkade is a long-standing member of the Electron Microscopy section of the RMS, having served as chair and other functions. He has been involved in the set-up of the RMS mentoring scheme, which started in 2022.

One of his main efforts is to bring together imaging communities and organise the funding of imaging infrastructure. He has been actively involved in the BioImagingUK community since its inception. He co-founded EM-UK, an electron microscopy (EM) network, with Pippa Hawes from the Pirbright Institute. In 2019, he helped establish the volume electron microscopy (vEM) community alongside Lucy Collinson from the Francis Crick Institute, Gerard Kleijwegt, and Ardan Patwardhan from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory at the European Bioinformatics Institute. He is also a recipient of two Chan Zuckerberg Initiative awards aimed at community building: one for vEM and another for correlative microscopy (COMULISglobe).