Ron Caplain, Photographer

Ron Caplain began photographing in the 1970's as a landscape photographer. In the 80's he became interested in street work and people and that is where he is today. Although he has not had any formal training he has taken many workshops amongst which are Ansel Adams, George Tice and Joel Meyerowitz.

Currently he has many bodies of work and is still working in these genres, including, street people, parades, conversations, people on the street, illusionary, and juxtapositions.

Geoff Williams, Manager of the Leduc BioImaging Facility at Brown University

Geoff Williams is in his fourteenth year as manager of the Leduc BioImaging Facility at Brown University. The opportunity to combine visual arts, science, technology and mastery of a skill clicked with his discovery of Microscopy (electron and light) as an undergraduate at Connecticut College. Geoff transitioned from a graduate program at Michigan State University to running the Imaging facility at Central Michigan University before arriving at Brown. Over the past 20 plus years he has been honing his craft as both an electron and light microscopist, paying much more attention to the aesthetic of each image collected than is typically required of a purely scientific investigation. Geoff’s work, under the name Nanoscape, provides a tactile and striking view of samples we may or may not encounter in our day-to-day lives.

Wendy Salmon, Light Microscopy Specialist, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT

Wendy Salmon is the Light Microscopy Specialist in the W.M. Keck Facility for Biological Imaging at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, MA and co-directs the annual Analytical and Quantitative Light Microscopy short course at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, MA. She studied biology at the University of Richmond in Richmond, VA, USA and discovered the wonders of light microscopy during summer research at the University of North Carolina in her hometown of Chapel Hill NC, USA. She received early training in live cell imaging with Dr. Clare Waterman and Dr. David McClay before transitioning to core facility work in 2002. She has advised and trained hundreds of researchers in basic and advanced light microscopy at four institutions and the MBL. She previously served as a judge for the Olympus BioScapes and Koch Center Image Awards contests.

Urs Ziegler, Head of Facility, Center for Microscopy and Image Analysis, UZH

Urs Ziegler entered the field of microscopy in 1990 while investigating attachment and movement of nematocytes in Hydra. He continued to use various microscopy techniques in his research to investigate cell adhesion in neurite outgrowth as well as host-pathogen interactions. In 2007, he joined the Center for Microscopy and Image Analysis at the University of Zurich as head. He is involved in many research collaborations, supporting microscopy-related questions and developing applications in the fields of light and electron microscopy, sample preparation, 3D and automated microscopy as well as correlative microscopy approaches.

Stefan Terjung, Operational Manager of the ALMF at EMBL Heidelberg

Stefan Terjung studied biology and chemistry at the University of Heidelberg (DE). At the beginning of his studies he discovered his passion for microscopy techniques. For his thesis at the Institute of Cell Biology he investigated biological applications of two-photon microscopy. He obtained his PhD in botany at the Heidelberg Institute for Plant Sciences (HIP) in 2004. Stefan joined the Advanced Light Microscopy Facility (ALMF) at EMBL Heidelberg in 2003. Since 2016 he is Operational Manager of the ALMF.

In this position he is regulary involved in organizing and teaching courses on light microscopy techniques.

Hiroaki Misono, Professor of Graduate School of Brain Science, Doshisha University

Hiroaki Misono (a.k.a. Miso) studied Psychology in college to be a counselor. He then discovered his passion for the brain and nerve cells, and started to study Cell Biology and Neuroscience on his own. This eventually led him to his PhD in Biological Sciences and academic career in Neuroscience. He has extensively used light microscopy techniques, such as live cell imaging and super-resolution microscopy, in his research on ion channels and Alzheimer's disease. He also has a strong interest in showcasing microscope images, which brought him a couple of honorable mentions in the Olympus BioScapes competition.

Zhu Xueliang, Professor of Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Dr. Zhu Xueliang is a senior tenured faculty in Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, China Academy of Science (CAS). He is a world-famous cellular biologist for the breakthrough findings on the cell cycle and the regulation mechanism of cell motilities. He has published many peer-reviewed papers on the top journals including but not limited to Cell, Nature Cell Biology, Developmental Cell, Journal of Cell Biology. He also served for the research community of cell biology for long time. He currently is the Associate Editor-in-Chief for Chinese Journal of Cell Biology and Molecular Biology of the Cell and the Editorial Board Member of Cell Research, and he used to be the director of State Key Laboratory of Cell Biology, Associate Dean of Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Vice President of Chinese Society for Cell Biology, etc.

Wang Yalin, Director of Biomedical Research Core Facilities, Westlake University

Wang Yalin is the Director of Biomedical Research Core Facilities at Westlake University, Hangzhou, China. Prior to joining Westlake, Dr. Wang managed imaging core facilities at multiple institutions, including Janelia Research Campus of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Virginia, and Tsinghua University. He has extensive experience in light microscopy and electron microscopy imaging and associated sample preparation techniques. His major research interest is in correlative microscopy and 3D electron microscopy.