Prof. Manley is an Associate Professor and head of the Laboratory for Experimental Biophysics in the Department of Physics at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland. Prof. Manley is a world-renowned expert in single molecule and super-resolution fluorescence microscopy. Her research focuses on developing tools such as high-throughput and “smart” super-resolution microscopies. Her group has used this approach to investigate a wide range of biophysical questions, such as how bacteria constrict during cell division, how telomeres and other genomic loci are packaged, how centriolar proteins are arranged in three dimensions, and how bacteria package and distribute their genetic material. In recognition of her achievements, she has been awarded the 2019 Medal for Light Microscopy by the Royal Microscopical Society, and was named an APS Fellow in 2020. She is also the recipient of a European Research Council Starting Grant (2009) and Consolidator Grant (2019).

Dr. Lucy Collinson is an electron microscopist with a background in microbiology and cell biology. She has a degree and PhD in Medical Microbiology, and post-doctoral research investigating membrane trafficking pathways. She has run a series of biological EM facilities since 2004, at UCL and then at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute, which became part of the Francis Crick Institute in 2015. With a team of 10 electron microscopists and 3 physicists, she oversees more than 100 research projects with more than 60 research groups within the Crick, imaging across scales from proteins to whole organisms. Her microscopy and technology development interests include volume EM, correlative imaging techniques, cryo-microscopy, X-ray microscopy, image analysis, citizen science, microscope design and prototyping.

Sara Bals is a Full Professor. She is currently the head of the Electron Microscopy for Materials Science (EMAT - www.emat.uantwerpen.be) group. She is an expert in the application and development of electron tomography for functional nanomaterials. By combining state-of-the-art electron microscopy with advanced 3D reconstruction algorithms, the positions and chemical nature of individual atoms in a nanomaterial are measured. These measurements are now also  performed under realistic conditions (heating, liquid or gas flow experiments). She was awarded an ERC Starting grant in 2012 and an ERC Consolidator grant in 2019. She is elected member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts. In 2020, she was granted with the European Microscopy Society Award for advances in tomography.

Prof. Michael Nash earned a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Cybernetics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2006 and a dual PhD in Bioengineering and Nanotechnology from the University of Washington, Seattle in 2010. Following Postdoctoral training in Applied Physics at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Nash began as tenure-track Assistant Professor with joint appointments at the University of Basel, Department of Chemistry and ETH Zurich, Department of Biosystems Science & Engineering in 2016. Nash’s research is in the area of molecular engineering and biophysics, specifically focusing on single-molecule protein biomechanics, protein engineering, and the interface between synthetic and biological systems.

Dr. Bryan Heit was born and educated in Calgary where he developed an interest in research following a undergraduate research project in the laboratory of Dr. Paul Kubes. Here, Bryan began researching the role of phagocytes such as neutrophils in inflammatory responses. In 2001 This undergraduate project morphed into a PhD project in which Bryan elucidated the signalling pathways used by neutrophils to sort through the multitude of inflammatory mediators released in the vicinity of an infection such that the neutrophils are able to migrate to and destroy the invading pathogen. Bryan published 13 papers over the course of this project, and ultimately received the Governor Generals Gold Medal for Academic Achievement – Canada’s highest academic award – for this work.

In 2008 Bryan moved to Toronto, to pursue a post-doctorate in the laboratory of Dr. Sergio Grinstein. Here, Bryan studied a variety of topics including the molecular pathways regulating programmed cell death (apoptosis), phagocyte maturation and the survival of pathogens within phagocytes, and elucidated the signalling mechanisms used by CD36 – a receptor used to phagocytose malaria, tuberculosis and oxidized low-density lipoprotein (“bad” cholesterol). During this time Bryan developed significant expertise in live-cell and super-resolution microscopy; an interest which continues to this day and forms the foundation of much of his research.

In 2011 Bryan took up his first faculty position at the University of Western Ontario. Here, Bryan began studies assessing the mechanisms used by phagocytes for the removal of apoptotic cells, with a focus on how failures in these processes lead to diseases such as atherosclerosis. In addition, Dr. Heit continues his research into general phagocyte biology, phagocyte membrane biophysics, pathogen-phagocyte interactions and development of next-generation microscopy methods and analytical routines.

Dr. Hugo Sanabria is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Clemson University. He graduated from Tec of Monterrey, Mexico, with a B.S. in Physics Engineering. He pursued an M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Houston under Dr. John H. Miller's supervision. His thesis was on applications of dielectric spectroscopy to study biopolymers. Dr. Sanabria got awarded a Keck Fellowship from the Gulf Coast Consortia for his postdoctoral research with Dr. M. Neal Waxham at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. There he studied Ca²⁺ signaling proteins involved in learning and memory processes. Later, he got awarded an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship at Heinrich Heine University, in Germany, under Dr. Claus A. M. Seidel's supervision, where he developed and enhanced single-molecule methodologies to study the structure and dynamics of proteins. In 2014 he joined Clemson University and, in 2016, he was named CU School of Health Research Faculty Scholar. He is a recipient of the prestigious NSF CAREER award, the 2019 Board of Trustees Excellence award, and the 2019 HORIBA Young Fluorescence Investigator Award. NSF and NIH fund his research program.

Nicole Robb is an Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick Medical School, a visiting lecturer at the University of Oxford and a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow. Her research interests include virus replication, super resolution imaging, using biophysics techniques for rapid pathogen detection and the application of machine learning algorithms for image analysis. She holds several patents on viral diagnostic technology and is the co-founder of a spinout company from the University of Oxford that is working on COVID-19 diagnostic testing.

Keana Scott is a Physical Scientist in the Materials Measurement Science Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Keana earned her B.S. in Engineering and Applied Sciences from the California Institute of Technology, Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, and M.S. in Biotechnology from the Johns Hopkins University. After developing automation engineering solutions for Celera Genomics during their collaboration with NIH on the Human Genome Project, Keana led a group of scientists involved in computational chemistry and proteomics, while also contributing to informatics and genomics projects within both Celera and Applied Biosystems. Keana joined NIST in April 2006 as a member of the Materials Measurement Science Division to work on multi-modal bioimaging technique development and the microanalysis of biological materials using electron and ion beams. Keana's current work focuses on the characterization of release products from consumer products and the development of automated analytical approaches for optical, electron, and ion microscopy.

Dr. Christopher V. Kelly joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Wayne State University in 2013. Dr. Kelly earned a B.A. in Physics from Oberlin College, M.S.E. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ph.D.in Applied Physics from the University of Michigan, and an interdepartmental postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University. At WSU, he received the NSF CAREER Award from the Divison of Material Research and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teaching Award. He is currently the director of the Richard Barber Interdisciplinary Research Program, which provides undergraduate research opportunities throughout Wayne State University. His expertise includes nanoscopic optics, nanoengineering, and computational techniques to resolve the underlying biophysical principles that govern biological membranes.

Etienne Dague was born in 1978 in Nancy, France. He studied pharmacy while he graduated from a master degree in medical and biological sciences applied to the chemistry and microbiology of water. After defending his pharmaceutical thesis in 2003, he began a PhD thesis in physico-chemistry dedicated to the analysis of the interface between microorganisms and aqueous solutions. He then moved, in 2006, to the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) and worked on the application of atomic force microscopy in microbiology. After a fruitful year, Etienne won a researcher position at CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), in 2007, and was affected to the laboratory for analysis and architecture of systems in Toulouse. His work aims at adapting nanotechnologies in life science and especially for medical applications. He develops his interdisciplinary researches at the interface between physics, chemistry and biology. Expert in applying Atomic Force Microscopy on biological, living systems, he developed cell immobilization techniques, tip functionalization, single cell and molecular recognition. Interested by interactions at cells interface his research topics include microbiology (antibioresistance, adhesion, biofouling), cellular biology (electroporation, mechanobiology of cancerous cells, cardiology) and transmembrane proteins (especially GPCRs).

Deb Kelly completed her PhD in Molecular Biophysics at Florida State University and her post-doctoral training in Structural Biology at Harvard Medical School. During these pursuits, she developed technical breakthroughs in the field of cryo-EM that are now being used by the liquid-phase EM community. As interest in liquid-phase imaging has skyrocketed in recent years, the Kelly team has been on the leading-edge of adapting this technology for biomedical applications, in particular virus research. Dr. Kelly is currently a professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University, where she holds the Lloyd and Dottie Foehr Huck Chair in Molecular Biophysics and directs the Center for Structural Oncology (CSO). The CSO aims to combat the molecular culprits that fuel human disease by revealing their hidden vulnerabilities. 

Raymond R. Unocic is a Senior R&D Staff Scientist and Group Leader of the Materials MicroÅnalysis group in the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Prior to ORNL, he received his B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering from The Ohio State University, M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Lehigh University, and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from The Ohio State University (2008). In 2009 he joined ORNL under the Alvin M. Weinberg Early Career Fellowship then transitioned to Staff Scientist in 2011. His research is focused on the utilization of advanced electron microscopy characterization methods (aberration corrected STEM, HRTEM, EELS, EFTEM, EDS, and in situ S/TEM) for materials research.