Evan Keller

Dr. Keller is the Richard and Susan Rogel Professor of Oncology and serves as Director of the Single Cell Spatial Analysis Program (website: singlecellspatialanalysis.umich.edu), Director of Research Core Office in the Office of Vice President of Research, and Associate Director of the Rogel Cancer Center Shared Resources. Dr. Keller obtained a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M.) and Masters of Preventive Veterinary Medicine/Epidemiology (M.P.V.M.) degrees from the University of California, Davis and a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Developmental Biology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is Board Certified in the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (Oncology). Dr. Keller has published more than 260 scientific publications in research that extends from basic through clinical studies with a focus on crosstalk between tumor and its microenvironment and the pathobiology of metastasis. He has worked with multiple single cell and spatial platforms including both transcript and protein based.

Charlotte Stadler

Charlotte Stadler is the co-director of the Spatial Biology platform and Head of the National Spatial Proteomics facility at Science for Life Laboratory. She is also a group leader at the Royal Institute of Technology. She received her Ph.D. in 2012 within the framework of the Human Protein Atlas (HPA) project, with Prof. Emma Lundberg and Prof. Mathias Uhlén as her supervisors. During her PhD she established many of the protocols and pipelines for image based subcellular protein profiling that are used in the Human Protein Cell Atlas. Today, her main focus is to develop and implement services and technologies that can be used in discovery to translational and clinical research. In her role within the Spatial Proteomics Facility, she works with many companies in the spatial omics field. Her internal research projects focus on the implementation of multiplexed imaging solutions into clinical practice but also on integrating different omics types for a more complete molecular understanding of the tissue sample biology.

Jovan Tanevski

My research interests are at the intersection of systems sciences and machine learning. I am interested in the development of methods that combine data and prior knowledge. I have a strong background in machine learning and experience in computational systems biology. I am experienced in modeling and design of dynamical systems and their application to problems coming from the domains of systems and synthetic biology. I am currently working on developing methods for analysis of highly multiplexed and spatially resolved data. I am keen to understand the different patterns of expression within the tissue and bridge them to the underlying dynamical mechanisms that can explain the emergent functional programs and organization.

Clément Levin

I obtained my PhD in immunology from Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris, in 2016, on the role of skin dendritic cells and T follicular helper cells in intradermal vaccination. Afterward, I joined Ipsen, a French biopharma company, for my post-doc, working in the histopathology and biomarker team. I joined Sanofi in 2021 and am now Principal Scientist in the Molecular and Digital Histopathology group, leading a team of lab scientist and working on the identification of relevant biomarkers for immuno-oncology and immuno-inflammation, and the development of highplex immunofluorescence imaging.

Suresh Kumar Poovathingal

Dr. Suresh Poovathingal, heads the Single cell & Microfluidics Expertise Unit at the Center for Brain and Disease Research technologies, Leuven. The expertise unit facilitates support and provides expertise to departmental researchers, while implementing state-of-the-art technologies and workflows in the field of single cell and spatial genomics. The unit has established and offers several single-cell sequencing workflows both based on droplet/nanowells based and plate based single cell sequencing technologies as well as spatial genomics sequencing technologies. Several key single cell sequencing techniques such as Patch-seq, CITE-seq, Cell Hashing and sc ATAC seq has been established in his unit. His lab has led the development of two novel, low-cost, cutting-edge droplet based single cell genomics assay and a sequencing based spatial transcriptomics assay, namely HyDrop (a fully customizable droplet microfluidics assay based on hydrogel barcoded beads for single cell RNA and ATAC sequencing) and Nova-ST (spatial RNA sequencing technique derived from barcoded Illumina NovaSeq 6000 S4 flow cells), respectively. Suresh is a chemical engineer by training. He obtained his PhD in computational biology from National University of Singapore, where his work focused on stochastic modeling of the biological processes (PLOS Comp. Biol.5(11); 2009; BMC Bioinf., 11(1); 2010). He also holds a Masters degree (MSc) in Process Engineering from Hamburg University of Technology. Prior to joining VIB, he completed his postdoc at Caltech/University of Luxembourg, where his work focused on single cell proteomics and transcriptomics.

Linda Kvastad

Harsharan Bhatia

Dr. Bhatia is leading spatial omics team at Helmholtz Munich with expertise in Neuroimmunology, Neuroinflammation, and advanced spatial molecular profiling. He began his research career with a PhD focused on the role of immune cells in nutrient-sensing pathways as a means to reduce neuroinflammation, uncovering critical links between metabolic signals and immune cell function in brain health. Dr. Bhatia then pursued postdoctoral research at UCLA, where he explored the impact of early dietary interventions in vivo, demonstrating that targeted nutritional strategies can enhance immune resilience, synaptic plasticity and alleviate neuroinflammatory responses across developmental stages. In his current research, Dr. Bhatia is advancing spatial molecular profiling of complex tissues, a crucial step for understanding cellular functions across both physiological and pathological states. His lab develops cutting-edge methods combining whole-organ optical clearing, 3D imaging, AI-driven analysis, robotic tissue extraction, and ultra-sensitive proteomics and spatial transcriptomics. These groundbreaking tools offer an unprecedented view into the cellular and molecular landscapes within intact organs and organisms, bridging the gap between morphological insights and mechanistic understanding. Dr. Bhatia’s recent work applies these technologies to study various pathologies, including acute brain injuries, infections, metabolic dysfunction, and neurodegenerative diseases, revealing critical biological insights with significant implications for therapeutic intervention. His innovative work in spatial proteomics has been highlighted in Nature Biotechnology and served as a cover story in Cell

Ayse Koksoy

Dr. Ayse A. Koksoy is a senior research scientist at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, TMP, where she spearheads the development of advanced algorithms and data-driven methodologies to enhance digital pathology, cancer diagnostics and treatment strategies. With a robust academic foundation that includes a Ph.D. in Molecular Physiology, Biophysics, and Cardiovascular Sciences from Baylor College of Medicine, as well as a Doctor of Medicine degree from Ankara University; Dr. Koksoy bridges the gap between clinical insights and computational innovation. Her commitment to continuous learning is evident through her completion of several ML/AI certifications in her research domain as well as the Data Science/Analytics Career Track Fellowship, equipping her with cutting-edge data analytics skills. Beyond her primary role, she actively contributes to the scientific community as a member of QUAREP-LiMi, focusing on quality assessment and reproducibility in light microscopy data. Dr. Koksoy’s interdisciplinary expertise positions her at the forefront of biomedical research, where she leverages her diverse background to drive impactful discoveries in cancer research.

Arvind Rao

Arvind Rao is a Professor in the Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan. His group uses image analysis and machine learning methods to link image-derived phenotypes with genetic data, across biological scale (i.e. single cell, tissue and radiology data). Such methods have found application in radiogenomics, drug repurposing based on phenotypic screens and spatial profiling in tissue, as well as in spatial transcriptomics. Arvind received his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Bioinformatics from the University of Michigan, specializing in transcriptional genomics, and was a Lane Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, specializing in bioimage informatics.

Anna Wilbrey-Clark

Volker Bruns

Volker is a digital pathology and spatial biology enthusiast with a computer science background. Volker and his team develop commercial image analysis software for digital pathology and offer contract development, as well as image analysis as a service in the life sciences.

Melanie Planque

Mélanie Planque is the head of the Spatial Metabolomics Expertise Center at the VIB Center for Cancer Biology at KU Leuven in Belgium. After earning her MSc in analytical chemistry from the University of Lyon in France, she completed a PhD in proteomics at the University of Namur in collaboration with the CER group, focusing on the detection of food allergens by LC-MS. In 2018, she joined the Laboratory of Cellular Metabolism and Metabolic Regulation, led by Prof. Sarah-Maria Fendt at VIB, as a mass spectrometry and metabolomics expert. Since 2023, she has been working in the Spatial Metabolomics Expertise Center, collaborating with scientists from the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology, as well as with external universities and private companies, to support research in the biological, pharmaceutical, and medical fields.

Jan Mulder

Jan Mulder is a trained neurobiologist and has been working in the human protein atlas project since 2004. His main research is focussed on mapping protein expression and distribution in healthy and the disease affected brain using bulk, single nuclei and high resolution spatial transcriptomics and antibody based proteomics approaches. Jan Mulder has been using antibody based approaches utilizing the over 50.000 antibodies generated in the HPA project to study protien distribution in human and animal tissues to map the mammalian brain and investigate species similarities and differences. He also utilized these approaches and resources to study altered protein expression and distribution in disease affected brain tissue with a main focus on neurodegenerative disorders. More recently he started to implement transcriptomics methods in his research to obtain a more detailed and complete overview of protein expression. He started using whole tissue (bulk) RNAseq methods, but his lab is now mainly performing high resolution spatial transcriptomics experiments to capture the complexity of brain tissue at a cellular resolution. These methods allow a genome wide analysis and enable the capture of rare cells with their cellular environment.

Enikő Lázár

Sikander Hayat

Dr. Hayat is a computational group leader at the University Hospital, Aachen. My team has vast experience in single-cell, spatial transcriptomics and AI method development. We have previously published several articles on multi-omics spatial transcriptomics to find novel drug targets for different heart failure conditions and kidney diseases. His team focuses on cross-organ senescence and fibrosis, and immune-stomal interactions that meditate disease conditions. He has also developed novel deep learning tools to integrate multi-omics data and identify disease patterns in high-resolution spatial transcriptomics.

Elena Castellano

Elena obtained her PhD in Molecular Bioscience from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in Spain. She conducted her PhD studies on small extracellular vesicles and prostate cancer at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO). Prior to her doctoral thesis, Elena gained extensive scientific knowledge and molecular biology research skills by working in oncology-related laboratories at NYU Langone Health in New York and the Medical Research Council in London. After more than six years in the academic research field, she pursued a Master’s degree in Medical Affairs from Talento-EPHOS to transition into the pharmaceutical industry. In 2024, Elena joined Hawk Biosystems, beginning her industry career in the Research Partnerships department.

Mattias Rantalainen

Since 2013, Mattias Rantalainen leads the Predictive Medicine group at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Karolinska Institute in Sweden. He is the co-founder and CTO of Stratipath a company developing AI-based precision pathology solutions for clinical use. Dr. Rantalainen completed his PhD at Imperial College London with a thesis focused on multivariate pattern recognition methods and their applications in the biomedical domain, followed by postdoctoral research at the Department of Statistics and at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at University of Oxford. Dr. Rantalainen focus on medical research that is driven by statistical machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and large population representative data sets. His research is centered on projects in areas of cancer precision medicine and computational pathology. Dr. Rantalainen leads the CHIME project at Karolinska Institute, focused on large population representative studies in computational pathology. He is the coordinator of the Swedish AI Precision Pathology (SwAIPP) consortium, and the ABCAP consortium, which are both focused on developing and translating AI-based computational cancer precision pathology. He is also leading the initiative Data-Driven Research at KI (DDKI) at Karolinska Institutet.

Eric Reits

Eric Reits is head of the microscopy core facility at the Amsterdam UMC, secretary of the Dutch Society of Microscopy, and chair of the national NL-BioImaging microscopy infrastructure. Here, all the researchers involved work together for optimal innovation, integration and data analysis. The ambitions are too great to be realized by any individual institution and thus require a joint approach, which is made possible by the obtained funding (25 million euros, in 2023), and part of the Euro-BioImaging community. Recent efforts in his facility focus on expanding the spatial biology possibilities and linking this to different omics technologies, and the development of FAIR data management and HPC computing power to support these developments.

Rudy van Eijsden

Rudy van Eijsden studied Biological Health Sciences at Maastricht University in The Netherlands where he also obtained his PhD in Clinical Genetics. Rudy moved to the VIB MicroArray Facility (now named VIB Nucleomics Core) in Leuven Belgium, first as a post-doctoral scientist within the bioinformatics team, later as a staff-scientist responsible for project management and consultancy. Rudy has been at Bruker Spatial Biology for more than 10 years first as Application Scientist providing support to scientists and now as Director of the field application teams in Europe and Asia.

Sheila M Cummings

Sheila Cummings, DVM, DACVP is a Senior Principal Pathologist in Discovery Immunology with AbbVie, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. Her work focuses on immunological diseases in dermatology including hidradenitis suppurativa, atopic dermatitis and psoriasis. Her group has embraced new spatial transcriptomic technologies, and she is excited to present some of their work in hidradenitis suppurativa. Prior to joining the team at AbbVie, Sheila was part of the Investigational Pathology group with Sanofi in Southboro, MA, USA. Earlier in her career, she served as a Veterinary Officer for the Government of Hong Kong, SAR at the Tai Lung Pathology Laboratory where she oversaw the Avian Influenza Detection and Surveillance programs. She earned her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from the Atlantic Veterinary College in beautiful Prince Edward Island, Canada and completed her comparative pathology residency at Harvard Medical School. She loves spending time outside at the beach, skiing, and hiking in New England or traveling anywhere in the world.

Victoria Wosika

Victoria Wosika is currently a Scientific Marketing Manager at Lunaphore, where she contributes to the development of content to promote the use of the company’s COMET™ technology and enhance its scientific reputation. In her role, she leads the Lunaphore Open Science Initiative, a sponsorship program that supports researchers in their data dissemination activities, including conference attendance and open-access manuscript publication. This initiative underscores her commitment to fostering collaboration and making cutting-edge research more accessible to both the scientific community and a broader audience. Prior to joining Lunaphore, Victoria served as Biomarker and Scientist Lead at Novigenix, where she contributed to the development and characterization of blood-based biomarkers for the early detection of cancer and the prediction of patient response to immunotherapy. She holds a Ph.D. in Life Sciences, during which she developed RNA and protein fluorescent reporter assays in single-cell model organisms using live imaging techniques and image data analysis.

Dana Mustafa