Invited Speakers

Volume Imaging with Light

Kelly Rogers

Topic to be confirmed

Biography
Professor Kelly Rogers is Head of the Advanced Technology and Biology Division at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) in Melbourne, Australia, where she also manages the Centre for Dynamic Imaging (CDI). After completing a PhD at Griffith University, she undertook postdoctoral research at the Institut Pasteur, Paris for 7 years before returning to Australia and establishing the CDI. The CDI is both a core facility and research lab, focused on the application and development of light microscopy techniques and volumetric imaging, such as those based on light sheet and expansion microscopy. Over the last decade, her team has developed unique workflows for studying a variety of diseases, including malaria, cancer metastasis and immune cell function, using both off the shelf and custom built microscopes and analysis pipelines.

Kazuhide Shaun Okuda

Technique in Focus

Biography
Dr. Okuda earned his PhD from the University of Auckland in 2015 and is currently a Group Leader and Senior Lecturer at the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science, La Trobe University, Australia. He completed postdoctoral training at Cancer Research Malaysia and later in Professor Benjamin Hogan’s laboratory at the University of Queensland and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Across these roles, Dr. Okuda employed zebrafish models and live-imaging to identify promising anti cancer and anti lymphangiogenic compounds, visualise dynamic signalling events during vascular development and regeneration, and discover novel genes involved in lymphatic biology. In 2023, he was recruited to La Trobe University to establish his own laboratory, which focuses on identifying and characterising therapeutic targets and drug leads that modulate the vasculature using zebrafish as a model system. Dr. Okuda has received multiple imaging awards, including 1st Prize (Life Science Category) in the LMA/VIA 2021 Image Competition.

Irina Kabakova

Technique in Focus

Biography
Irina Kabakova is a Professor of Physics at UTS School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences with the broad portfolio of research activities in label-free and quantum imaging techniques. She is a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centres of Excellence in Quantum Biotechnology (QUBIC) and Optical Microcombs for Breakthrough Science (COMBS), advancing frontiers of speed and sensitivity of optical imaging techniques.

Volume Imaging with Electrons

Kirk J. Czymmek

Exploring diverse photosynthetic organisms with ambient and cryo-volume electron microscopy

Biography
Dr. Kirk Czymmek is the Director of the Advanced Bioimaging Laboratory and Principal Investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in Missouri USA. Dr Czymmek received his Ph.D. in Botany and Plant Pathology at Michigan State University and has over 30 years’ experience dedicated to advanced microscopy techniques including most forms of light, x-ray, electron and correlative microscopy. His work has focused on developing and applying cutting-edge microscopy tools for imaging cells, tissues, and biomaterials. Dr Czymmek has also been instrumental in developing resources and increasing accessibility to volume EM as a leader in the volume EM community initiative.

Jorgen Kornfeld

Acquisition and analysis of large volume electron microscopy data for connectomics

Biography
Dr Joergen Kornfeld is a connectomics researcher and neuroscientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. His group builds a vertebrate brain scale volume electron microscopy pipeline and develops machine learning methods to automate segmentation and analysis, studying how the zebra finch stores its learned song in synaptic wiring. He studied molecular biology as an undergraduate at the University of Heidelberg and later computational biology at ETH Zurich. For his PhD he trained with Winfried Denk at the Max Planck Institute of Medical Research in Heidelberg, followed by a postdoc with Michale Fee at MIT. Joergen is a co-founder of ariadne.ai, one of the leading AI startups in analyzing volume electron microscopy data.

Nicole L. Schieber

Problem Solver: The ROI challenge: practical solutions for targeting complex specimens in Volume EM

Biography
Nicole Schieber manages the Life Science and Soft Matter Electron Microscopy Laboratory at the Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis, The University of Queensland. She has extensive expertise in volume electron microscopy (vEM), spanning serial block-face SEM, FIB-SEM, array tomography, and correlative approaches that link light, X-ray and electron microscopy. Nicole’s focus is enabling reliable region of interest targeting in large, complex specimens and translating this into robust, high-resolution vEM datasets. She is President of the Volume Imaging Australia (VIA) SIG committee and is committed to advancing training, collaboration, and community engagement in volume imaging across Australia and internationally.

Volume Imaging with X-Rays and Neutrons

Elizabeth Duke

Keynote: Topic to be confirmed

Biography
Dr Elizabeth Duke has spent her career working at synchrotron facilities developing X ray methods for biological research. After many years at the Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS) at Daresbury Laboratory in the UK, where she contributed to advances in macromolecular crystallography including MAD phasing, automation, and beamline design, she went on to lead the design and construction of the first macromolecular crystallography beamlines at Diamond Light Source. Her research interests later expanded to X ray imaging for biology, including leading the development of cryogenic soft X ray imaging and the cryo soft X ray microscope at Diamond. Liz is currently Team Leader for Biological X ray Imaging at EMBL Hamburg, where they have developed High Throughput Tomography (HiTT) for imaging biological tissue, often within correlative, multi modal imaging workflows.

Filomena (Floriana) Salvemini

Technique in Focus

Biography
Floriana Salvemini is a Senior Instrument Scientist at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), where she co‑leads the operation and development of the neutron imaging instrument DINGO. She holds a PhD in Applied Physics from the University of Florence, completed in collaboration with the National Research Council (CNR) in Sesto Fiorentino, Italy. Her research focuses on advancing neutron‑based imaging and characterisation techniques across a wide range of scientific applications, with particular emphasis on the study of heritage and culturally significant materials. She has been an active contributor to the international neutron imaging community, serving on the Board of the International Society for Neutron Radiography from 2018 to 2024.

Thomas van de Kamp

Technique in Focus: High-throughput synchrotron X-ray microtomography of insects

Biography
Thomas van de Kamp is an entomologist working at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. In 2011, he obtained his PhD in Biology at the University of Düsseldorf. For his doctoral thesis he studied weevil functional morphology using synchrotron X-ray imaging and digital 3D reconstructions. Currently, he holds the position of Senior Scientist and Principal Investigator for morphological X-ray imaging at the Institute for Photon Science and Synchrotron Radiation of KIT, which operates the X-ray imaging beamlines of KIT’s particle accelerator, the KIT Light Source. His research interests include insect functional morphology, evolution and diversity & X-ray imaging of biological and paleontological specimens.

Andrew Kingston

Problem Solver

Biography
A/Prof Andrew Kingston has been working in volumetric imaging for nearly 20 years. His expertise is in computational imaging with some experience in instrumentation. He primarily develops tomographic reconstruction techniques that enable high-resolution and artefact suppression. He is the director of imaging science at the National Laboratory for X-ray Micro Computed Tomography at ANU (CTLab, https://ctlab.anu.edu.au), is on the board of the int. assoc. of computed tomography (intACT), and on the editorial board for the Elsevier Journal on tomography of materials and structures. He has published over 100 papers and is a member of the national academy of inventors with 10+ patents. In recent years he has also applied his computational skills to develop ghost imaging and tomography techniques with x rays and neutrons.

Correlative Imaging with Volumes

Yannick Schwab

Correlative Volume Microscopy: New Tools for Sub-Cellular Exploration in Plankton, Parasites and Human Tissue

Biography
Dr. Yannick Schwab is a Team Leader in the Cell Biology and Biophysics Unit at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, where he also heads the Electron Microscopy Core Facility (EMCF). He joined EMBL in 2012 and has since built a research program focused on methods development in volume correlative imaging, combining fluorescence and X-ray imaging of whole-mount specimens with volume electron microscopy. The EMCF, under his leadership, offers access to a broad portfolio of cellular EM techniques, including ultrastructural analysis, 3D electron microscopy, and CLXEM across diverse biological model systems. Beyond technology development, Dr. Schwab actively collaborates with biologists across the life sciences, with current projects spanning host-pathogen interactions, marine biology, and cell biology.

Kristina D. Micheva

Array tomography strategies to understand and quantify synapse diversity

Biography
Kristina D. Micheva is a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford University, California, USA. She is coinventor of array tomography. Dr. Micheva is interested in synapse organization, function and plasticity, and uses correlative array tomography to explore the diversity of synapses, axons and their myelin in experimental animals and human patients.