Nigel Jamieson

Nigel Jamieson is a Clinical Senior Lecturer within the Institute of Cancer Sciences and an Honorary Consultant HPB surgeon at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He completed his undergraduate medical degree at the University of Glasgow when his interest in pancreatic cancer research began. He subsequently undertook a PhD funded by the Chief Scientist Office investigating gene expression signatures in pancreatic adenocarcinoma at the Beatson Institute. After completing his surgical training including observership periods at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore he spent an international fellowship year of pancreas and liver surgery in Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, Australia where he gained significant experience in post-neoadjuvant therapy pancreatic resections as well as robotic surgery. He holds awarded a Clinician Scientist Fellowship by Cancer Research UK and upon returning to Glasgow was awarded a Lord Kelvin and Adam Smith Leadership Fellowship from the University of Glasgow.

He has contributed to over 140 peer reviewed publications and has an active role in the development and management of the Precision-Panc platform, his laboratory group focusses upon the interaction between the immune microenvironment and chemotherapy in the tumours of patients with pancreatic cancer. He has established a spatial transcriptomic facility characterising multiple malignancies, premalignant lesions, and inflammatory conditions using multiple single-cell spatial technologies. He works closely with Pancreatic Cancer UK and is part of a national group aiming to standardise care for patients with pancreatic cancer across the UK.

Francesca D. Ciccarelli

Henrik Failmezger

Henrik Failmezger has studied Bioinformatics at the Ludwig-Maximilians and the Technical University of Munich.
He completed his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research and the Universität zu Köln, Cologne, where he developed new methods for the analysis of microscopic time-lapse data.
As Postdoc at the Institute of Cancer Research, London and at Roche Diagnostics, Munich, he analyzed the spatial distribution of tumor and immune cells in the tumor microenvironment. He is currently working as Associate Director, Spatial Data Science at AstraZeneca Computational Pathology GmbH, Munich in the field of digital pathology.

Chris Hanley

Chris Hanley graduated from Imperial College London with a Biochemistry BSc in 2008. This was followed by an MRes (2011) and PhD (2014) in cancer research from the University of Southampton (UoS), including a period of study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Following his PhD, Chris worked as a post-doctoral researcher at UoS-Cancer Sciences at Johns Hopkins-Centre for Cell Dynamics before appointment to his current faculty position as Lecturer in Quantitative Cell Biology at UoS. Dr. Hanley’s research aims to understand how the tumour microenvironment influences cancer progression. Particularly focussing on the the role of cancer associated fibroblasts (CAFs). To examine these processes, state-of-the-art methods for analysing human tissue samples are used: including single-cell (sc)RNA-Sequencing; spatial transcriptomics; digital pathology analysis of multiplexed immunostaining and 3D organotypic co-cultures.

Konstantin Maksin

Dr. Konstantin Maksin received a Ph.D. in Medical Science from the Poznań University of Medical Sciences in Poland in 2017 and completed his special training in Pathology at the same department in 2016. He is a practitioner pathologist and researcher at Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust. His current interest, except daily practice, is focused on experimental pathology, computational/digital pathology, tumor-stroma and tumor-vessel relations. He is a collaborator of many scientific institutions both academic and med-tech corporations.

Miao-Ping Chien

Miao-Ping Chien received her PhD in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of California, San Diego in 2013, and went on to do a postdoc at Harvard University, working on technology development for biology (combining biophysics, advanced imaging, and computational biology). She joined Erasmus University Medical Center as a group leader in June 2017. Her current research focuses on developing and applying multidisciplinary technologies (advanced microscopy and imaging, computation, single cell technology and bioinformatics) to investigate the underlying mechanisms of tumorigenesis, particularly of rare cancer-driving cells. Since becoming a PI, Miao-Ping has received various awards and grants including NWO Vidi and Veni grants, Oncode Institute junior fellowship, KWF Dutch Cancer Society grant, Ammodo Science Award and Cancer GenomiCs.nl (CGC) fellowship. She is a founder of UFO Biosciences, which aims to identify actionable targets driving clinically relevant tumorigenic phenotypes.

Stephanie Craig

Stephanie is a Lecturer in Precision Medicine at the Patrick G. Johnson Centre for Cancer Research, Queens University Belfast. She has expertise in applying and validating translational cancer research methodologies using molecular pathology techniques (immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridisation, multiplex immunofluorescence, digital image analysis) and statistics with a scientific interest in oro-digestive cancers (Head and Neck, Oesophageal, Colorectal). Her current research focuses on predictive biomarker studies and understanding confounding variables that influence the prediction of poor prognosis subgroups in cancer research including reproducible study design, choice of molecular test, and assessment criteria.

Thierry Voet

Thierry Voet graduated with a Master in Bioscience Engineering from the University of Leuven (KU Leuven, Belgium), and holds an inter-university post-graduate in Human Genetics. Following his PhD in the Human Genome Laboratory at KU Leuven, he pioneered single-cell microarray analyses, and in 2010, he joined in the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Sanger Institute (Cambridge, UK) to explore next-generation sequencing technologies for single-cell genomics, which led to an Associate Faculty membership. In 2014, he became Associate Professor at KU Leuven following a tenure track, and was appointed Professor in 2017 and Full Professor in 2022. In 2021, he founded the KU Leuven Institute for Single Cell Omics (LISCO) together with 33 colleagues, of which he is the director. His research focuses on (1) the development of methods for single-cell and spatial multi-omics, and (2) their application to study the biology of cells in human development, aging and disease.

Victor Perez

I received my BSc in Physics at UNAM, Mexico and MSc in biophysics at TU Dresden. I did my PhD research in the group of Prof. Dr. Ernst H.K. Stelzer in Frankfurt working on the topics of super-resolution fluorescence microscopy and image reconstruction. I acquired experience in industry at BASF where I developed several image analysis and image acquisition workflows to accelerate and standardize data extraction routines. I am currently part of the Schapiro Lab in Heidelberg where my aim is to establish standard analysis pipelines for highly-multiplexed images of stained tumors.

Volker Bruns

Dr. Volker Bruns (LinkedIn, Orcid) heads the Medical Image Analysis (MIA) research group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Erlangen, Germany, since 2018. The Fraunhofer Society is Europe’s largest non-profit organization for applied research and Fraunhofer IIS is the largest of all institutes. The MIA group’s research focuses on software and AI development in Digital Pathology and Spatial Biology. The range of services includes image analysis, contract RnD, and technology licensing. Most recently, the histopathology image analysis solution MICAIA® (www.micaia.ai), the manual whole-slide scanning software iSTIX® (www.istix.de), and the virtual ring trials platform ParasiteWeb (www.parasiteweb.com) were commercialized with partners. Between 2008 and 2018, Volker was active in the field of media technologies, where he completed his PhD on high throughput video compression on GPUs at the Ilmenau University of Technology. He previously graduated from Tampere University of Technology, Finland, and from Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences with degrees in computer sciences.

Anders Eriksson

Anders Eriksson serves as the Lead Field Application Scientist for ChipCytometry instrumentation in Europe. In this capacity, he serves as a vital link between scientific tools and researchers, providing technical and scientific support to existing and prospective customers of CellScape. His deep interest in spatial biology and proteomics has been honed over a successful career in neuroscience, during which he worked at both the prestigious A*STAR in Singapore and Uppsala University. Anders holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Uppsala University in Sweden.

Brian Reichholf

Brian completed his PhD work at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna, working on RNA biology and bioinformatics. He built on his interest in data analysis and AI during a short stint in the banking sector and is now a Principal Scientist at Boehringer Ingelheim, working in the department of Translational Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology, focusing on pre-clinical oncological translational science. Here he works on novel methods in digital pathology and analytical approaches to multimodal biomarker analysis, with the goal of translating the findings in the pre-clinical stage to clinical settings.

Marc Claesen

Marc Claesen is the CEO and one of the founding members of Aspect Analytics. He obtained his PhD in machine learning at KU Leuven, focusing on scalable machine learning, modeling strategies for imperfect labeling and automation of data analysis pipelines. While completing a postdoc in bioinformatics, Marc developed a passion for leveraging data science & software engineering to support life sciences research. As a result, he co-founded Aspect Analytics, a software company focused on making tools to uncover the mysteries of spatial multi omics data analysis for key applications in life sciences, pharmaceutical and biomarker research. In his spare time, Marc enjoys trying to replicate complex restaurant dishes for his wife and children, and possesses the ability to make Dad Jokes at will.

Reza Mirzazadeh

I work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Science for Life Laboratory and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Having earned my Ph.D. from the Karolinska Institute, my expertise lies in in situ OMICs. My current postdoctoral focus is on spatial transcriptomics and spatial multimodal OMICs. Recently, we have developed an approach that merges spatially resolved transcriptomics with single nuclei RNA sequencing from a single-tissue section. This technique, applied to mouse brain tissue and human breast cancer samples, is designed to improve our comprehension of tissue architecture at a finer molecular scale in low-input samples.

Roberto Spada

Roberto Spada holds a PhD from the National Biotechnology Center-CSIC in Madrid (Spain), specializing in autoimmune diseases, with a particular interest in the types of cells that could be responsible for the initial development of lupus. After completing his studies in Madrid, with a brief stay as a visiting scientist at Guy’s Hospital in London, he has worked for Merck Millipore, Miltenyi Biotec, and since 2017 for Standard BioTools (previously known as Fluidigm), currently working as the Director of Global Marketing for the flow cytometry, spatial biology, and genomics product lines.

Dana Mustafa

Tiankui Peng

Peng Tiankui is a Senior Application Scientist at SeekGene Biosciences, specializing in advanced biotechnological applications. With a profound understanding of various single-cell and spatial transcriptomics techniques on microfluidic platforms, Peng excels in integrated analysis of multi-omics data. His innovative contributions have significantly advanced our understanding of cellular dynamics and spatial organization within biological systems. Passionate about interdisciplinary research, he pioneers novel approaches bridging molecular biology and engineering. Peng actively fosters collaboration and knowledge exchange within the scientific community, driving forward impactful discoveries and technological advancements.

Debayan Mukherjee

Debayan Mukherjee received his PhD in Cancer Biology from The University of Dundee in 2011. Debayan subsequently moved to Sheffield to undertake his postdoc in Department of Oncology at the University of Sheffield. In 2014, Debayan joined the Manchester Cancer Research Centre, and was leading the pre-clinical and translational research funded by Prostate Cancer UK and subsequently Caner Research UK investigating radiotherapy resistance and overcoming resistance using immunotherapy, and other novel targeted therapies. In 2021, Debayan joined GSK as a Principal Scientist and was leading the protein work within the Spatial Multiplex Imaging team. Debayan has been developing and applying multiplex IF, and spatial analysis focussed on immune biomarkers, validation, reproducibility, and improvement of image analysis outputs for spatial imaging assays. In 2024, Debayan moved to Oncology Translational Research at GSK, and is now leading the Spatial imaging work within the Oncology line.

Eleanor O’Roberts

Eleanor obtained her PhD from the Institute of Cancer Research (University of London) where she investigated the role of a long non-coding RNA in the regulation of MYCN protein in rhabdomyosarcoma and neuroblastoma. She then moved to Stockholm for a postdoc at Karolinska Institutet where her work involved characterising the role of non-coding RNAs and RNA-modifying enzymes in DNA repair. In 2021 she moved from the RNA world into the world of proteins when she joined SciLifeLab for a position in the Spatial Proteomics Unit, led by Charlotte Stadler. The unit uses state-of-the-art instruments to run multiplexed immunofluorescence projects on tissue samples as a service, providing users with high resolution spatial proteomics data. Eleanor’s work involves running user projects as well as internal research into novel uses of this technology and method development.