Ricardo Henriques leads the Optical Cell Biology group at ITQB NOVA in Lisbon, where his team works at the intersection of physics, biology, and software engineering. His goal is to push the physical boundaries of light microscopy to study biology at the nanoscale while making these technologies accessible to everyone. His group develops open-source computational frameworks like NanoJ and NanoPyx that enable researchers perform super-resolution imaging with standard diffraction-limited microscopes. This allows laboratories worldwide to access techniques that were previously restricted to well-funded institutions with costly equipment. 
More recently, his focus has shifted towards applying artificial intelligence to bioimage analysis, especially making deep learning tools usable by biologists without programming skills. ZeroCostDL4Mic exemplifies this effort: a cloud-based platform that simplifies training and deploying AI models for microscopy, removing the technical barriers that typically hinder biologists from adopting these powerful methods. Ricardo strongly supports open science and reproducibility, consistently advocating for transparent AI workflows that maintain the reliability and interpretability of complex algorithms in quantitative biological research.

Jan Huisken is an Alexander-von-Humboldt Professor at the Georg-August University in Göttingen, internationally recognized for his pioneering advancements in light sheet microscopy and biomedical imaging. He studied physics in Göttingen and Heidelberg, focusing on three-dimensional fluorescence microscopy, optical manipulation, and developmental biology, particularly in zebrafish. Huisken obtained his PhD at EMBL Heidelberg, where he developed multidimensional light sheet microscopy (Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy, SPIM) under the guidance of Ernst Stelzer and Joachim Wittbrodt. As a cross-disciplinary HFSP postdoctoral fellow in 2005, Huisken joined Didier Stainier’s group at the University of California, San Francisco, where he applied light sheet microscopy to study cardiovascular morphogenesis in zebrafish. He subsequently led a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden from 2010 to 2016, and from 2016 to 2021, served as principal investigator and director of Medical Engineering at the Morgridge Institute for Research. Since 2021, Huisken has been leading innovative research as an Alexander von Humboldt Professor in Göttingen. His lab covers every aspect of modern in vivo imaging, from sample preparation to image analysis. Recently, he initiated the Flamingo project: a modular, portable microscope platform whose design supports advanced imaging not only in the lab but also in the field, democratizing access to cutting-edge microscopy far beyond traditional optics facilities. For his groundbreaking contributions, Huisken received the Royal Microscopy Society Medal for Light Microscopy (2017), the Lennart Nilsson Award (2020), and the Humboldt-Professorship (2021).

Florian Jug received his PhD in computational neuroscience from ETH Zurich. At Human Technopole in Milan, he develops AI methods for the life sciences, with a particular focus on microscopy and advanced data processing. His work centers on generative models for multimodal data integration, data unmixing and denoising, and uncertainty quantification. A key motivation is to bridge molecular, cellular, and tissue scales through innovative computational approaches. By advancing AI as a trusted partner for biology, his overarching goal is to elevate the rate of scientific discovery through the methods and tools his team develops.

Prof. Dong Li from School of Life Science, Tsinghua Univ., his research focuses on developing both microscope hardware and deep learning algorithm, and synergizing both advantages to push the envelop of 2D/3D imaging of intracellular dynamics at ultrahigh spatial and temporal resolution with high fidelity and quantifiability for unprecedented long duration. Prof. Dong Li' group has developed multi-modality structured illumination microscopy (Multi-SIM), super-resolution light sheet microscopy (SR-LSM), and rationalized deep learning denoising (rDL) algorithm architecture, tec., which have been employed to shed new light on understanding diverse biological phenomena. 

Suliana Manley earned her B.S. in physics and mathematics, graduating with honors from Rice University. She pursued her doctoral studies in the laboratory of Prof. David Weitz at Harvard University. Her work on biological imaging began when, as a National Research Council Fellow at the NIH, she worked with Dr. Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz. There, she developed sptPALM, a method combining photoactivation and single-particle tracking to measure the dynamics of thousands of molecules within individual cells.

She she is currently a full professor of physics and bioengineering at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Her research focuses on developing high-throughput and “smart” super-resolution microscopy techniques. Her group applies these tools to fundamental biophysical problems, currently focusing on mitochondrial dynamics, network organization, ultrastructure, and organelle contacts. Her contributions have been recognized with numerous honors, including the 2019 Medal for Light Microscopy from the Royal Microscopical Society and election as an APS Fellow in 2020. She is also a recipient of a European Research Council Starting Grant (2009), Consolidator Grant (2019), and Synergy Grant (2026).

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 new technologies for biological and 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, a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society, and an Honorary Fellow of the British Biophysical Society.

Takeharu Nagai is a Distinguished Professor at SANKEN, The University of Osaka, internationally known for pioneering next-generation fluorescent and bioluminescent imaging technologies. He has developed a series of widely adopted protein-based probes and the AMATERAS trans-scale imaging platform, enabling simultaneous visualization of rare and dynamic biological events across centimeter-to-micrometerr scales. His work has significantly shaped modern bioimaging by bridging molecular design, optical engineering, and quantitative life science.
Nagai also leads innovative efforts to create autonomously light-emitting plants as a new paradigm for sustainable illumination, integrating synthetic biology with real-world applications. His contributions have been recognized through major honors including the JSPS Prize, the Yamazaki-Teiichi Prize, the Osaka Science Prize, and the Shimadzu Prize. He is the founder and CTO of LEP Inc., a spin-off start-up dedicated to advancing bioluminescent technologies for science and society.

Jonas Ries studied physics in Bremen and Konstanz with a specialization in quantum optics. After completing a PhD in biophysics at the TU Dresden in 2008 and a postdoctoral fellowship at the ETH in Zurich in 2012, he joined the EMBL in Heidelberg as a group leader. Since 2023 he is a full professor for Advanced Microscopy and Cellular Dynamics at the Max Perutz labs at the University of Vienna.

Markus Sauer is full professor for Biophysics at the Biocenter and the Rudolf-Virchow Center for Integrative and Translational Bioimaging of the University of Würzburg. His work focusses on the development of new refined fluorescence imaging methods with a particular focus on single-molecule sensitive super-resolution microscopy methods. He developed direct stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (dSTORM) to investigate the molecular architecture of synapses, centrioles, mitochondria, nuclear pore complexes and synaptonemal complexes. He is leading a multidisciplinary team with background in biology, chemistry, physics, and computer science. Furthermore, he developed methods to characterize tumor cells and T cells with single-molecule sensitivity to improve the efficacy and safety of immunotherapies, and tools to decode the interplay of therapeutic antibodies with tumor cells to induce killing by the complement system. Currently he is developing methods that combine Expansion Microscopy and super-resolution microscopy to achieve a structural resolution of 1 nm and better in cells and tissue.

Hari Shroff received a B.S.E. in bioengineering from the University of Washington in 2001, and under the supervision of Dr. Jan Liphardt, completed his Ph.D. in biophysics at the University of California at Berkeley in 2006. He spent the next two and a half years performing postdoctoral research in Eric Betzig’s lab at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus where his research focused on the development of photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM), an optical super-resolution technique that earned Betzig a share of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

For the next thirteen years, Shroff headed the Laboratory of High Resolution Optical Imaging at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the National Institutes of Health, working to improve fluorescence microscopy methods suited for volumetric time-lapse (‘4D’) imaging. Commercialized inventions from this period include dual-view selective plane illumination microscopy (diSPIM) and instant super-resolution microscopy (iSIM), which are now used in hundreds of laboratories around the world. Shroff recently returned to Janelia, where he continues to push the envelope in biological imaging.

Current areas of research include adaptive optics, deep learning, and the study of brain development in simple organisms.

Ilaria Testa is a Professor in Applied Physics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. She was awarded a PhD in 2009 working on the use of Photoswitchable Fluorescent Proteins for functional analysis in living cells. Between 2009-2014 she worked as a Postdoc in the laboratory of Professor Stefan Hell co-pioneering RESOLFT nanoscopy and multi-parameters single molecule imaging.   

In the last ten years she established an advanced imaging laboratory at the Science for Life Laboratory and Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Her research group works at the interface of physics, chemistry and neuroscience to investigate the complex principles underlying protein-protein interaction and dynamics in cells and tissues. They are fascinated by the transient nature of fundamental biological process such as synaptic transmission which is enabled by molecules moving rapidly and timely within the intricate synaptic environment. These studies are enabled by new technologies. Recently, she demonstrated event-triggered microscopy to capture elusive cellular events at high resolution and STARSS, an approach to measure rotational dynamics of cellular complexes to detect molecular condensates.

Laura Waller is the Charles A. Desoer Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley. She received B.S., M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004, 2005 and 2010. After that, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer of Physics at Princeton University from 2010-2012. She is a Packard Fellow for Science & Engineering, Moore Foundation Data-driven Investigator, OSA Fellow, and Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. She has received the Carol D. Soc Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award, OSA Adolph Lomb Medal, the SPIE Early Career Award and the Max Planck-Humboldt Medal. 

Jiamin Wu is an associate professor in the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University, and PI at the IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Tsinghua University. His current research interests focus on computational imaging and system biology, with a particular emphasis on developing new tools for the understanding of large-scale intercellular dynamics in vivo. He has developed many computational imaging frameworks, including scanning light-field microscopy (Wu et al. 2021 Cell), two-photon synthetic aperture microscopy (Zhao et al. 2023 Cell), and digital adaptive optics (Wu et al. 2022 Nature) to overcome the long-standing barriers of intravital mesoscale imaging and high-throughput data analysis, which may lead to a new data-driven paradigm for high-throughput biological discoveries and drug screening. In recent 5 years, he has published over 40 papers in Nature, Cell, and so on, and receives awards such as XPLORER Prize, Alibaba Damo Academy Young Fellow and Frontiers of Science Award. He has also served as the Associate Editor of PhotoniX, Optics Express and IEEE TCSVT.

Dr. Peng Xi is a Boya distinguished professor at College of Future Technology, Peking University, China. His research interest is on the development of optical super-resolution microscopy techniques. He has been awarded the National Distinguished Young Scholar. He is the Chief scientist of the Key Research and Development Plan of the Ministry of Science and Technology. He is on the editorial board of 5 SCI-indexed journals such as Light and Advanced Photonics. With over 120 publications in prestigious journals such as Nature, Nature Photonics, and Nature Methods, his work has garnered more than 8,500 citations. Dr. Xi has been recognized with numerous honors, including the China Optics Important Achievement Award (2016), the Guangdong Provincial Natural Science Second Prize (2022, ranked 2nd), and a gold medal at the 11th International Invention Exhibition (2025, ranked 1st). He is a Fellow of the IAAM and a senior member of both OPTICA and SPIE. He has been granted three American patents and 25 Chinese patents. An elected Fellow of the IAAM and a senior member of OPTICA and SPIE, he actively shapes the international scientific community through plenary talks at major conferences and holds a robust patent portfolio of three U.S. and nineteen Chinese inventions.

Dr. Chao Zuo is a Zijin Chair Professor at Nanjing University of Science and Technology (NJUST), Distinguished Professor of "Changjiang Scholars Program", Ministry of Education of China. He leads the Smart Computational Imaging Laboratory (SCILab: www.scilaboratory.com) at the School of Electronic and Optical Engineering, NJUST, and is also the founder and director of the Smart Computational Imaging Research Institute of NJUST. He has long been engaged in the development of novel Computational Optical Imaging and Measurement technologies, with a focus on Phase Measuring Imaging Metrology. His seminal research has been widely disseminated through one book, 3 book chapters, and over 300 peer-reviewed journal publications, which have accumulated more than 20,000 citations. His work has been featured on the covers of leading journals such as eLight, Light, Optica, AP, PhotoniX, and LPR more than 40 times, and extensively reported by NPG, MIT Technology Review, TechXplore, Phys.org, and SPIE Newsroom. He holds more than 130 issued patents and has co-founded three startup companies based on technologies developed in his lab. Due to his pioneering contributions to computational phase imaging and metrology, he was elected as a Fellow of OPTICA (2022), SPIE (2023), and IOP (2023). He is also the recipient of the prestigious QEOD Fresnel Prize of EPS (2023), ICO-IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Optics (2022), Rising Star of Light - Popescu Winner Award (2022), SPIE Advanced Photonics Young Innovator Award (2025), iCANX Young Scientist Award (2024), Photonics Young Investigator Award (2022), and JPhys Photonics Emerging Leaders (2020). He currently serves as an Editor of eLight, PhotoniX, Optics Letters, Optics and Lasers in Engineering, IEEE Transaction on Computational Imaging, Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, and Advanced Devices & Instrumentation. For consecutive years, he has been recognized as an Elsevier Highly Cited Researcher (2020–), World's Top 2% Scientist (Career & Single-year) (2020–), and Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2022–).