Plenary speakers
Siân Culley
King's College London
Image Analysis
Siân is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at King’s College London applying novel image analysis techniques to fluorescence microscopy data. During her postdoc, she developed analytical methods for achieving super-resolution in data from conventional microscopes (SRRF) and for assessing the quality of super-resolution images (SQUIRREL). Since starting her own group, she is focusing more on image quality assessment in microscopy. She is particularly interested in trying to discover how image quality relates to quantitative biological information within images, and under what conditions image processing methods can enhance accurate retrieval of this information.
Gail McConnell
University of Strathclyde
Advanced Techniques
Gail McConnell is Professor of Biophotonics at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK. Following a first degree in Laser Physics and Optoelectronics (1998) and PhD in Physics from the University of Strathclyde (2002), she obtained a Personal Research Fellowship from the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2003) and a Research Councils UK Academic Fellowship (2005), securing a readership in 2008 and professorship in 2012. The work in Gail’s multidisciplinary research group involves the design, development and application of linear and nonlinear optical instrumentation and new methods for biomedical imaging, from the nanoscale to the whole organism. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society, where she is the current Vice Chair of the Light Microscopy Committee.
Drew Berry
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
Conference Dinner Speaker
Drew Berry is a biologist-animator renowned for his visually stunning and scientifically accurate animations of molecular and cellular processes. With a background in cell biology and microscopy, Drew ensures that each project is scientifically rigorous and based on current research data. He has been a biomedical animator at WEHI Australia since 1995, and his work has been showcased at international venues such as the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, and the Royal Institute of Great Britain. In 2011, he collaborated with Björk on her album Biophilia. Drew has received numerous awards, including an Emmy, a BAFTA, and the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship. Watch his animations at wehi.tv
Invited Speakers
Sebastian Amos
Sebastian Amos
Sebastian Amos
University of Western Australia
Image Analysis - Methods and Pipelines
Azelle Hawdon
Izzy Jayasinghe
Izzy Jayasinghe
Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute
Quantitative Microscopy
Izzy Jayasinghe
Izzy Jayasinghe
Izzy Jayasinghe
UNSW
Single Molecule and Super-resolution imaging
Noa Lamm
Scott Mueller
John Lock
Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI)
Quantitative Microscopy
Scott Mueller
Scott Mueller
Scott Mueller
The Peter Doherty Institute
Multi-dimensional imaging
Invited Speakers - Live Cell Imaging
Samantha Stehbens
Dr Stehbens is a cell biologist with an interest in understanding the fundamental mechanisms that regulate cell adhesion and the cytoskeleton. They have made key contributions to the fields of quantitative microscopy, cell motility, adhesion and the cytoskeleton. This work has been published in a series of Nature Cell Biology, Nature Neuroscience, and Journal of Cell Biology papers spanning multiple fields from ion channels in brain cancer, to growth factor signalling and autophagy in endometrial and breast cancer. They completed their PhD in the laboratory of Prof. Alpha Yap, before relocating to UCSF to work with Prof. Torsten Wittmann. They returned to Australia, to train in oncology focused laboratories with the goal of applying their skill set to understanding cancer survival and metastasis. Their research group aims to understand how cells integrate secreted and biomechanical signals from their local microenvironment to facilitate movement and survival. They have uncovered a novel role for the microtubule cytoskeleton in protecting cells from rupture during 3D cell migration and invasion. Using patient-derived tumour cells, coupled to genetic alteration and substrate microfabrication, they use state-of-the-art microscopy to understand the fundamental mechanisms of cell migration with the aim of understanding how to better prevent cancer metastasis.
Lucy Palmer
Professor Lucy Palmer is head of the Neural Network Laboratory at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Australia. She completed her Master of Science at the University of Minnesota, Ph.D at the Australian National University, and postdoctoral research at the University of Bern, Switzerland and Charite University, Berlin. Her research uses two-photon calcium imaging during behaviour to investigate how dendritic activity and neural networks contribute to learning and memory in health and disease.
Invited Speakers - Advanced Techniques
Avinash Upadhya
Avinash completed his PhD at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University, where he investigated novel optical strategies to structure light for single particle tracking and live cell imaging. He is now a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre of Light for Life, University of Adelaide, where his work involves the development of gentle optical imaging techniques for long-term imaging of embryo development and health. This involves cutting edge techniques such as Bessel beam two photon light sheet microscopy, hyperspectral imaging, as well as novel acquisition strategies such as compressed sensing..
Kylie Dunning
Dr Kylie Dunning heads the Reproductive Success Group within the Robinson Research Institute at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Her transdisciplinary research uses microfabrication, biophotonics and imaging to better understand the mechanisms underpinning healthy oocyte and embryo development. Dr Dunning’s interdisciplinary expertise is best illustrated by her multi-faceted studies of embryo development and metabolism, in which she uniquely capitalised on the use of advanced optical analyses to develop a non-invasive technology to diagnose both the presence and location of aneuploid cells within the developing embryo. Her interdisciplinary research has received international recognition, winning the Basic Science Award at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (2021) and highlighted in TIME magazine (USA, Sept 2022).
Invited Speakers - Quantitative Microscopy
Noa Lamm
Noa Lamm is a group leader at the Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI), a conjoint Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney, and a Col Reynolds Fellow. In her postdoctoral training period, she specialized in investigating nuclear dynamics following threats to genome integrity. Specifically, she focused on the role of nuclear actin filaments in promoting DNA movement and structural alternations using live cell microscopy and innovative image analysis tools.
In 2023, she started the Nuclear Dynamics group at CMRI. Her lab is driven by a profound interest in unravelling the intricacies of nuclear function as a dynamic entity essential for maintaining genome integrity by facilitating genetic material repair when necessary. Leveraging advanced techniques such as live-cell imaging, super-resolution microscopy, and customized image analysis tools, her research group is dedicated to pinpointing the structural, architectural, and physical alterations that transpire within the nucleus in response to stress. Their goal is to comprehend how these alterations regulate DNA repair both temporally and spatially.
Azelle Hawdon
Embryologist, Adjunct Research Associate (Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, Monash University)
Azelle recently completed her PhD at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, Monash University under the supervision of Dr Jennifer Zenker. Where her research used advanced live imaging to decipher the spatiotemporal dynamics underlying early mouse embryo development.
Azelle is now works as a Clinical Embryologist at Monash IVF. She is passionate about uncovering the mysteries of early embryo development to make reproductive technologies more effective.
John Lock
John completed his PhD at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, and undertook a post-doc and Assistant Professorship at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm. Over his career, John has been a pioneer in the multidisciplinary field of Systems Microscopy, developing imaging-based single-cell systems biology approaches that fuse the spatial and temporal resolution of imaging with the quantitative scale and rigour of single cell omics. John’s research addresses fundamental topics spanning cell signalling, intracellular transport, adhesion, migration, polarity, division, and plasticity, as well as translational applications in precision diagnostics and drug discovery.
John now leads the Cancer Systems Microscopy Lab in NHMRC-funded projects focused on liquid biopsy analyses of prostate (CRPC) and lung (NSCLC) cancers, as well as ARC-funded research to map cancer cell plasticity. John is also driving the development of a novel drug-lead discovery platform, ‘CellaSense’, to accelerate targeted therapy development. The Cancer Systems Microscopy Lab thus collaborates across biological, clinical, computational, statistical and engineering disciplines in the development and application of Systems Microscopy strategies.
John was recently awarded a Scientia Research Fellowship at UNSW, and is an affiliate researcher of the Ingham Institute for Applied Medical Research, a Fellow of UNSW’s Expanded Perception and Interaction Centre (EPICentre) (which fuses data visualisation platforms with virtual reality and AI software systems), and is a founding member of UNSW’s Artificial Intelligence Institute and also the UNSW Data Science Hub (uDASH).
Invited Speakers - Tissue Imaging and Analysis
Raymond Yip
Dr. Raymond Yip is a Senior Research Officer at WEHI with joint appointment across Imaging, Genomics, and Hawkins laboratories. His research focuses on studying myeloma bone marrow microenvironment using spatial omics technologies. He leads the implementation of Institute’s spatial multi-omics initiative and supervises the operation of Australia's first MERSCOPE and Xenium. He is heavily involved in technology benchmarking activities and has extensive collaborations with biotechnology companies.
Invited Speakers - 5D Imaging
Scott Mueller
Scott is an NHMRC Leadership Fellow and a Dame Kate Campbell Fellow, in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, at The University of Melbourne. Research his laboratory is focused on dissecting the fundamental cellular processes involved in immune responses to viruses and cancer in order to identify new targets for vaccine design and therapeutics. The laboratory is interrogating neuroimmune interactions and stromal cell functions during infection and cancer, using tools including intravital imaging and transcriptomics.
Kevin Dean
Kevin Dean, a Northern California native, earned his B.A. in Chemistry at Willamette University, Oregon, where he was twice named an ESPN Regional Academic All-American in Football. After college, he cycled across the U.S. to raise awareness and funds for ALS, in memory of a friend affected by the disease. He completed his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Colorado, focusing on spectroscopy, protein engineering, and microfluidic analyses. Thereafter, Kevin established the first campus-wide light microscopy facility at the University of Colorado's BioFrontiers Institute. He then conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, receiving several accolades including the Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellowship. Currently, he leads a lab at UT Southwestern, developing advanced imaging and computational techniques to study cell biology in health and disease.
Invited Speakers - Image Analysis - Method and Pipelines
Elvis Pandzic
Dr Elvis Pandzic is a Senior Lecturer and Advanced Fluorescence Microscopy Specialist at UNSW, working at Katharina Gaus Light Microscopy Facility at UNSW's Mark Wainwright Analytical Centre (MWAC).
He received his PhD in Biological physics in 2013 at the McGill University (Canada) during which he developed novel image fluctuation correlation analysis tool allowing the study of membrane protein confinement.
During his career he worked on development of several extension of these bespoke image analysis tools, by which one can quantify fluorescence microscopy images to measure protein density, oligomerization, co-localization and dynamics in live cells. His current work at KGLMF involves applying those methodologies and developing and adapting the new ones tailored to answer the biomedical problems for the researchers at UNSW and beyond.
Sebastian Amos
Sebastian is a PhD candidate working with the Choi Cell Mechanobiology lab and BRITElab at the University of Western Australia and Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research in Perth, Western Australia. His research focuses on the changes to cell adhesion and behaviour that allow cancer cells to negotiate the mechanical challenges of the metastatic cascade in spheroids, single cells and subnuclear condensates. As an interdisciplinary scientist, he utilises and develops new ways to study these processes in biomimetic conditions using 3D biomaterials, soft lithography, microfluidics and conventional and novel correlative imaging techniques. Sebastian also develops data and image analysis tools for 3D cell biology to improve the accessibility of high-quality, open-source, and reproducible 3D bioimage analysis. He was recently awarded the John Farrant Prize for the best talk in biological/medical sciences at ACMM27 for his talk on 3D bioimage analysis. Sebastian is supported by a prestigious Hackett Postgraduate Research Scholarship and the interdisciplinary BioZone PhD Program.
Invited Speakers - Super-resolution and sub-cellular imaging
Izzy Jayasinghe
Izzy is an Associate Professor at Single Molecule Science, UNSW, and a UKRI Future Leader Fellow. She was awarded her PhD in 2011 at the University of Auckland for the early work applying localisation microscopy (STORM) to visualise the cardiac ryanodine receptor. Izzy established her independent research group in the University of Leeds in 2015 where developed adaptations of optical imaging methods such as DNA-PAINT and Expansion Microscopy (ExM) to study pathological nanoscale remodelling in the failing heart. Her current research focuses on developing more accessible, faster and higher resolution imaging methods for imaging optically-thick (and biologically more complex) samples. Izzy is a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society and advocates for Open Science and Equality and Inclusion in the UK and Australia’s STEM sector.
Scott Berry
Scott has a background in Theoretical Physics and Molecular Biology. He studied a PhD at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK, on mechanisms of epigenetic memory in plants, before moving to the University of Zurich in Switzerland as an HFSP and EMBO postdoctoral fellow. In Zurich, Scott worked on mechanisms of mRNA concentration homeostasis in mammalian cells. In 2021, Scott started his group at Single Molecule Science, the EMBL Australia node at the University of New South Wales, and is now also part of UNSW’s RNA Institute. His group works on quantitative regulation of gene expression at the single-cell level, primarily employing microscopy and systems biology approaches – including mathematical modelling.