SNSF Scientific Image Competition 2025

Get your cameras! Give Swiss research a face. 

​​​The SNSF Scientific Image Competition encourages researchers working in Switzerland to present their works to the public and the media. Photographs, images and videos will be rated in terms of their aesthetic quality and their ability to inspire and amaze, to convey or illustrate knowledge, to tell a human story or to let us discover a new universe.

Congratulations to successful PhD Defense Adrian Madarasz

On July 9, 2024, Adrian Madarasz, student of the Cutting Edge Microscopy (CEM) program under the supervision of Dr. Steven Proulx, has successfully defended his PhD thesis with the title: "Pathways and Dynamcis of Erythrocyte Efflux in Murine Models of Hemorrhagic Stroke".
Read more here.

EMBL Imaging Center (EIC) Imaging Symposium

The EMBL Imaging Centre (EIC) User Symposium (https://www.embl.org/about/info/imaging-centre/32247-2/) was held on October 17-18, 2024, at EMBL Heidelberg, Germany. This event brought together around 60 current and prospective users of EIC (https://www.embl.org/about/info/imaging-centre/), along with leading experts in electron and light microscopy. Read more here.

DSL Bring Your Own Data

Do you have trouble with your data analysis or would like to explore new approaches? The Data Science Lab (DSL) organises a three day Bring Your Own Data event during which DSL experts from various domains (in particular image processing) will help you solve data exploration, analysis and modelling challenges you might be facing in your scientific projects. Register until October 7!

Open positions MIC & DSL

There are currently two open positions in MIC and DSL. Please spread the word if you know someone who might be interested and don't hesitate to contact us or apply if you are interested in either position. You can find the vacancies here: Bioimage Analyst for new platform / IT Specialist for Bioimage Analysis Platform

European Microscopy Congress (EMC) 2024

The 17th European Microscopy Congress (EMC) took place on August 24-29, 2024, in Copenhagen, Denmark, attracting over 1,500 researchers and industry representatives. The event focused on the latest advancements in microscopy in the life and materials sciences, with a strong emphasis on both light and electron microscopy techniques.

CEM Summer School 2024

From July 4 to 5, 2024, the annual summer school of the PhD program Cutting Edge Microscopy (CEM) took place at the Seehotel in Bönigen, Switzerland. All students gave scientific presentations on their projects, focusing on applied microscopy and the results obtained. To enhance the interactive style of the presentations, the students presented in teams. The teams had to find a common denominator, usually the research area, which they then presented in the form of a joint presentation. This format encouraged a more lively atmosphere and was much appreciated by all participants. The subsequent individual progress reports from the students delved deeper into the microscopy applications. The review of the scientific part of the summer school took the form of a quiz where each student contributed to a pool of questions.

MIC Research Day 2024

On June 26, 2024, more than 180 participants from the Universities of Bern, Fribourg and Zurich, the EPFL in Lausanne and representatives from industry attended the traditional MIC Research Day, which took place at the Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences (DCBP). The balanced program of the event was presented by microscopists Li Xin, Isabel Schultz-Pernice, Saiko Yoshida, Oleksiy-Zakhar Khoma, Alicia Borgeaud, Divyansh Gautam, Matis Preza, Reto Lang and Benjamin Towbin, ranging from PhD students to established researchers and coming from all three faculties of the MIC (Vetsuisse, Natural Sciences and Medicine). In excellent presentations, these scientists showed the broad spectrum of microscopy applications represented in the MIC community.

Congratulations to successful PhD Defense Javier Pareja Román

On June 6, 2024 Javier Pareja Román, student of the Cutting Edge Microscopy (CEM) program under the supervision of Prof. Britta Engelhardt, has successfully defended his PhD thesis with the title: "Unveiling the cellular and molecular pathways of CD8 T cell migration into the CNS"

European Light Microscopy Initiative Meeting (ELMI) 2024

The 23rd International European Light Microscopy Initiative Meeting (ELMI) took place from June 4-7, 2024, in Liverpool, UK, gathering over 600 researchers, scientists and industry representatives to discuss the latest advancements in light microscopy, focusing on life sciences.

DSL Summer Trainings

Our partner the Data Science Lab is offering a new series of trainings in June 2024. The series covers a wide range of topics from machine learning to git and web-scraping. Of particular interest is a three day course on data visualization and publication with R given by experts from the R Bootcamp (https://therbootcamp.github.io/).

Zeiss User Meeting 2024

In collaboration with the Microscopy Imaging Center the Zeiss User Meeting 2024 will take place at the University of Bern.

When: 3 September 2024 - Start at 10.00 a.m., open end with dinner at 19.00 p.m.
Where: Institute of Cell Biology, Baltzerstrasse 4, University of Bern

Find more information and registration here.

Industry call for the best microscopy image

Following the success of past Image of the Year Awards, the search for the best light microscopy images in 2024 continues. The fifth annual Image of the Year competition recognizes the very best in scientific imaging worldwide.

The contest welcomes materials science images in addition to life science images to show the versatility of the art of science. This year, a new video category is introduced, enabling microscopists to show off the best of their moving images.

CEM Study Trip 2024

On February 1 and 2, 2024, a study trip took 18 PhD students of the PhD specialization program Cutting Edge Microscopy (CEM) and 3 "seniors", who were the CEM program scientific co-director Benoît Zuber, the MIC light microscopy specialist Yury Belyaev and the CEM coordinator Ruth Lyck, to Milan, Italy. There, the students visited the Human Technopole Institute (HT) in Rho Fiera. The HT is a large-scale research infrastructure launched by the Italian government in 2018. Since 2024, the HT has opened the first national facilities offering services and training for biomedical research with cutting-edge technology.

DSL & MIC retreat "Virtual Imaging Analysis"

On January 26, 2024, 25 participants from the faculties of Vetsuisse, Natural sciences, and Medicine met for DSL (www.dsl.unibe.ch) and MIC (www.mic.unibe.ch) retreat. The topic of the meeting was a feasibility of establishing a Virtual Imaging Platform at the University of Bern. The aim of this platform is to provide comprehensive support and virtualised IT infrastructure for storage, handling, and analysis of the images for all interested researchers at Bern.

MIC Research Day 2024 - Invitation

We are pleased to invite you to our annual MIC Research Day on June 26, 2024. 

The MIC Research Day is the MIC's annual networking event for scientists at the University of Bern. It brings together scientists who use microscopy with other interested researchers who want to use microscopy. Young scientists and established researchers present data from their exciting research projects. Scientists from other universities and from the research-oriented industry are cordially invited to take part in the MIC Research Day.

We are happy to present a day full of interesting topics and discussions and we are honoured to welcome great speakers who will share their expertise on microscopy in their various research areas.

Seminar and Demonstration - Cytation C10 confocal imaging reader

The Seminar and Demonstration to introduce the Cytation C10 confocal imaging reader from Agilent Technologies in collaboration with the Microscopy Imaging Center will take place on May 15, 2024 at the IRM in Bern.

CEM Presentation Event - December 2023

On December 07, our third and final Presentation Event of the PhD program Cutting Edge Microscopy (CEM) for the year 2023 took place. As our special guest we welcomed Elio Pellin from the Open Science unit of the University of Bern, who presented on the topic “Publications”. This educational presentation showed up the many possible paths leading to Open Access publishing. Scientific presentations were given by Jana Leuenberger, Tangtang Xiang and Oleksiy Khoma. Oleksiy, who is a new member of the CEM program, presented his research project. The event was concluded with an aperitif.

MIC Symposium 2023

The MIC Symposium was held in 2023 on November 17th with the theme “New Trends in Microscopy”.

The meeting was kicked off with a welcome address by Aurel Perren, the Deputy Dean of the Medical Faculty, and the exciting announcement by Britta Engelhardt, the president of the MIC, that the MIC was recently recognized as one of the five "official" core facilities of the University of Bern.

This year’s MIC symposium was a success due to the excellent speakers, and also from the excellent preparation by the MIC administration and our student helpers. And last, but not least due to the generous support we received from our industrial sponsors. The event was fully booked weeks in advance with over 200 registrations.

The scientific committee, Kerry Woods, Deborah Stroka, Thomas Nevian hope all attendees enjoyed the program and got an insight into new microscopy technologies that enable a more detailed look into the complexity of tissues and cells.

DSL Winter Trainings

Our partner the Data Science Lab is offering a new series of trainings in February 2024. Of particular interest for the imaging community is a course co-organised with the MIC on napari (https://napari.org/stable/), a multi-dimensional viewer for bioimage analysis. Other courses offered in the series allow people not familiar with image processing and the Python eco-system to be ready for the napari introduction.

Visit of Konstantin Yenkoyan from Yerevan State Medical University

On Thursday, November 23, 2023, Prof. Konstantin Yenkoyan, Vice-Rector for Science and Head of Neuroscience Laboratory of Yerevan State Medical University after Mkhitar Heratsi (YSMU), Armenia, visited representatives of the Microscopy Imaging Center of the University of Bern. Konstantin is also the coordinator of the first-time-ever successful Horizon 2020 project at YSMU and the scientist-in-chief of the "COBRAIN" Scientific-Educational Center for Fundamental Brain Research. This educational center aims at enhancing the research and innovation capacity of YSMU by strengthening the field of brain research with a special focus on autism and Alzheimer’s disease. The center offers a new model of research-based education and thus develops a new culture in higher education.

SNSF Scientific Image Competition 2024

​​​The SNSF Scientific Image Competition encourages researchers working in Switzerland to present their works to the public and the media. Photographs, images and videos will be rated in terms of their aesthetic quality and their ability to inspire and amaze, to convey or illustrate knowledge, to tell a human story or to let us discover a new universe. Find more information here.

All scientists working at a research institution in Switzerland are eligible to participate. The works must have been produced less than 12 months before the deadline for submitting entries.

Open Call for services from European research infrastructures, including Euro-BioImaging ERIC, for projects in the field of cancer research

The Horizon Europe provides a funding opportunity within the funded canSERV project.

This call offers financial support for services provided by European research infrastructures, including Euro-BioImaging ERIC, for projects in the field of cancer research. The deadline for submitting applications is January 4, 2024.

BioVisionCenter

Recently the BioVisionCenter was founded, a co-foundation by the Friedrich Miescher Institute and the University of Zurich, dedicated to all activities related to computer vision and advanced processing of complex bioimage datasets.

To celebrate the launch and foster collaboration within the scientific community, they are organizing the BioVisionCenter Symposium on the 9th and 10th of November 2023. This symposium will bring together renowned experts in the field of bioimage analysis who will share their insights, present cutting-edge research, and discuss emerging trends. It will be an excellent opportunity for researchers, students, and professionals to network, exchange ideas, and explore potential collaborations.

MIC Symposium 2023 - Invitation

We are pleased to invite you to our annual MIC Symposium taking place on November 17, 2023 at the UniS in Bern.

This year’s chosen topic of the MIC Symposium is “New Trends in Microscopy”. A wide range of topics on novel and unconventional microscopy techniques will be covered by speakers from different countries as well as by speakers from the University of Bern and from industry. Don't miss the opportunity to learn about the latest trends in microscopy and to network with participants and speakers from all over Europe. The Scientific Committee formed by Kerry Woods, Deborah Stroka and Thomas Nevian, all University of Bern, will guide you through the day.

Swiss Microscopy Core Facility Day 2023

11th Swiss microscopy core facility day this year took place on September 14, 2023 in Zurich and was organised by ScopeM, an imaging platform of ETH Zurich. About 50 members of Swiss imaging facilities and representatives of microscopy companies convened for a day to discuss the questions related to recent microscopy developments and different aspects of microscopy faculty operation.

Industry Contest for young scientists

You are a young scientist, postdoc or junior professor in Germany, Austria, Switzerland or the Netherlands? You are working on an exciting cell biology project but do not have access to confocal high content imaging? The imaging part is missing for a step forward or your next publication?

Submit your imaging assay idea in the contest and win access to high quality results.

COMULIS Training School "Imaging Across Scales"

The five-day COMULIS Training School "Imaging Across Scales" took place at the University of Bern on September 4-8, 2023. Organized by Ruslan Hlushchuk, Benoît Zuber (Institute of Anatomy) and Yury Belyaev (Microscopy Imaging Center) this event offered a balanced mix of theory and hands-on experience for 9 students from 4 European countries.

Summer Series 2023 from the Dubochet Center of Imaging

The Dubochet Center of Imaging (DCI) summer 2023 seminar series is an excellent opportunity to hear the latest in cryo-EM and cryo-ET from leading researchers in the field.  

The next dates and speakers will be:

- Arjen Jakobi (TU Delft, NL) on 01.09.23, 12:00, at EPFL Lausanne (Cubotron, BSP231)

- David Barford (MRC LMB Cambridge, UK) on 15.09.23, 11:00, at Uni Geneva

- Florian Schur (ISTA Klosterneuburg, Austria) on 22.09.23, 13:15, at Uni Bern (Ewald Weibel Auditorium, Institute of Anatomy)

Please contact us if you would like to have any further information.

CEM Summer School 2023

From July 6th to 7th, 2023, the annual summer school of the PhD program Cutting Edge Microscopy (CEM) took place at the Seehotel in Bönigen, Switzerland. Bönigen is a beautiful village on Lake Brienz. All students gave scientific presentations on their projects, with a focus on the microscopy applied and the results obtained.

ELMI 2023

The 22nd International European Light Microscopy Initiative Meeting place on June 6-9, 2023 in Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands. More than 400 participants from Europe and the whole world discussed recent advances in light microscopy aimed at a life sciences audience.

Congratulations to successful PhD Defense Anastasia Milusev

On July 6, 2023, Anastasia Milusev, student at the PhD program Cutting Edge Microscopy (CEM) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Robert Rieben and Dr. Nicoletta Sorvillo has successfully defended her PhD thesis with the title "Distinct arterial and venous glycocalyx dynamics impact endothelial function".

MIC Research Day 2023

On June 28, 2023, more than 120 participants from the University of Bern, Fribourg, Geneva, and industry representatives attended the traditional MIC research day, that took place at UniS. The well-balanced program of the event featured MIC users from all three Faculties of the MIC (Vetsuisse, Natural sciences and Medicine) as well as one researcher from the University of Fribourg and one industry speaker.
Nine scientists presented their research projects related to microscopy.

Inauguration Symposium for new electron microscopes at the Institute of Anatomy on July 5, 2023

The inauguration symposium to celebrate acquisition of the Titan Krios G4 transmission cryo-electron microscope and the Aquilos 2 cryo-focused ion beam milling scanning electron microscope takes place in the Ewald R Weibel Auditorium (Room No. A224) at the Institute of Anatomy, Bühlstrasse 26, 3012 Bern, on July 5, 2023. Prof. Werner Kühlbrandt of the Max-Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt will be sharing his insights in a scientific talk entitled “High-resolution cryoEM of mitochondrial membrane proteins”.

DSL Autumn Training

Our partner the Data Science Lab is offering a new series of trainings in September 2023. A series of courses on computer vision with Python, and in particular one session dedicated to napari, a multi-dimensional viewer for bioimage analysis, are of particular interest for the MIC community. You can easily register on Ilias (don't forget to login!).

Invitation to the MIC Research Day 2023

We are pleased to invite you to our annual MIC Research Day on June 28, 2023. 

The MIC Research Day shows a selection of research highlights based on microscopic techniques that have been realized by scientists from the University of Bern. Junior and senior researchers who are specialists in microscopy present data on their exciting research projects, which were achieved using state-of-the-art microscopy. With this event, the MIC brings together scientists using microscopy with other researchers who may wish to use the same instrument or a similar technique.

Short term scientific mission in Porto, Portugal, by Dr. Yury Belyaev

In April 2023, Dr. Yury Belyaev, light microscopy manager of the Microscopy Imaging Center of the University of Bern, visited the Advanced Light Microscopy (ALM) and the Bioimaging scientific platforms at i3S - Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, the University of Porto, Portugal. For this 5-day short-term scientific mission (STSM), Yury Belyaev received financial support from the COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Innovator Grant COMULIS (Correlated Multimodal Imaging in Life Sciences) MultEMPlex IG17121. 

PhD Defense L. van Os

Lisette van Os, student at the PhD program Cutting Edge Microscopy (CEM) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Olivier Guenat, will give her thesis defense on April 27, 2023.

Title: Immune cell migration during infection in organs-on-chip

PhD Defense S. Mutlu

Seyran Mutlu student at the PhD program Cutting Edge Microscopy (CEM) under the supervision of PD Dr. Fabian Blank and PD Dr. med. Amiq Gazdhar will give her PhD Defense on April 26, 2023.

Title: Adoptive transfer of HGF overexpressing T cells as potential therapeutic approach for bleomycin injured lung mouse model

Congratulations to successful PhD Defense Daniëlle Verschoor

On February 10, 2023 Daniëlle Verschoor, student of the Cutting Edge Microscopy (CEM) program under the supervision of Prof. Stephan von Gunten, has successfully defended her PhD thesis with the title: “Granulocytes, fragile but resistant. Unraveling the treatment resistance of granulocytes.”

MIC Training: Fundamentals of wide field microscopy

The MIC Training "Fundamentals of wide field microscopy" will take place on May 09 - 11, 2023. Content of the course will be: Basics of wide field microscopy. Basics of fluorescence. Filters and light sources. Digital cameras and digital imaging. Basics of image visualisation and processing, deconvolution and denoising.

Demonstration Events

The InCell Analyser (INCA) high-throughput microscope at the Vetsuisse Faculty has to be replaced soon. To learn about the performance of instruments on the market demonstration events will be held for the Molecular Device (Nano/Micro) instrument on March 27-30 and for the Cytation 5 and 10 instruments on April 18-19, 2023. 

MIC Workshop: Performance Test in Light Microscopy

In collaboration with the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, the MIC will offer the course “Performance Test in Light Microscopy”. It will take place on April 26-27, 2023. The course will present some basic performance tests to diagnose issues and benchmark performance of light microscopes.

CEM Study Trip 2023

In February 2023, a study trip took the PhD students of the PhD program Cutting Edge Microscopy (CEM) to Freiburg i.B., Germany. Here, the students visited the Life Imaging Center (LIC) of the University of Freiburg. The institute is headed by Dr. Roland Nitschke, who warmly welcomed the students and led them through the 2-day program together with his team. A relaxing tour through the beautiful city center of Freiburg i.B. completed the program.

Advanced Imaging course - UniFR

The Microscopy Imaging Center (MIC) collaborates with the Bioimage Core Facility of the Department of Biology and the Section of Medicine of the University of Fribourg. The course Advanced Imaging - Super-resolution fluorescence microscopy is open for PhD students of the Cutting Edge Microscopy specialization program.

PhD Defense M. Golomingi

Murielle Koni-Kepo Golomingi student at the PhD program Cutting Edge Microscopy (CEM) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Verena Schröder, will give her PhD Defense on March 15, 2023 at 14.00 at the ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research.
Title: “Interactions between the complement system and blood coagulation: a potential role of complement components and activation during haemostasis”

It is time to navigate your career maze!

The Life Science Zürich Young Scientist Network (LSZYSN) invites you to the Zurich Life Science Day, on the 7th of February 2023 at Irchel Campus. This is a day-long career fair and networking event with the most talented life scientists and companies. 

Multimodal Imaging

On February 2, 2023 the AGORA Cancer Research Center invites you to the workshop titled "Multimodal Imaging in life sciences and cancer research".

SNSF Scientific Image Competition

​​​The SNSF Scientific Image Competition encourages researchers working in Switzerland to present their works to the public and the media. Submit your picture until January 31, 2023.

MIC Symposium 2022 - Imaging cellular dynamics across scales

On November 18, 2022, the MIC Symposium “Imaging Cellular Dynamics Across Scales” celebrated how new microscopy technologies redefine our understanding of dynamic cellular processes at different biological scales.

First protocol for Monitoring the point spread function

MIC congratulates Dr. Yury Belyaev on his co-authorship in a new publication on the use of the point spread function for quality control of confocal microscopes

PhD midterm presentation by MD Adrian Madarasz

Adrian Madarasz, student of the PhD programm Cutting Edge Microscopy (CEM), will give his midtearm presentation on December 16, 2022 at 2 p.m at the Theodor Kocher Institute, University of Bern.

Benchtop High-Speed Confocal Microscope

Register for this demonstration event at DBMR, University of Bern

Stedycon Demonstration in Bern

Prof. Dr. Christian Söller invites you to this Instrument Demonstration in Bern.

Translational molecular imaging: Using a mass spectrometer as a microscope

The DBMR Research Conference is hosting Prof. Dr. Ron M.A. Herren from the Molecular Imaging Institute, Maastrich University

Scanning System VS200 and All-in-One Microscope APX100

Organized in collaboration with Yury Belyaev (MIC) & Fabian Blank (DBMR)

Congratulation to successful PhD Defense

On September 20, 2022 Raphaela Seeger, student of the PhD program Cutting Edge Microscopy (CEM) has successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled "Investigating synaptic vesicle exocytosis by structural studies of rat synaptosomes". 

Swiss Microscopy Core Facility Day 2022

The 10th Swiss Microscopy Core Facility Day took place this year on September 15 - 16, 2022 and was organised by Pascal Lorentz from the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel.

MIC at "Nacht der Forschung"

The activities of the MIC "Nacht der Forschung" were eagerly attended. The MIC team says a big "THANK YOU" to all the helpers, without whom the MIC activities would not have been possible.

Entry-level position at the Imaging Core Facility (IMCF) 

The Imaging Core Facility (IMCF) of the Biozentrum of the University of Basel is offering a position to a young scientist to enter the field of modern high-end light microscopy.