A vibrant year for the Euro-BioImaging Virtual Pub in 2025

In 2025, the Euro-BioImaging Virtual Pub brought together thousands of participants across 39 events, showcasing the breadth of imaging expertise available through Euro-BioImaging Nodes and partner communities, and highlighting how advanced imaging methods translate into real-world scientific impact.

Throughout 2025, the Euro-BioImaging Virtual Pub - our weekly online seminar - continued to serve as a dynamic and inclusive meeting place for the imaging community, bringing together imaging scientists, imaging facility staff, and technology developers from across Europe and beyond. With a strong and steadily growing audience, the Virtual Pub once again demonstrated its value as an open, accessible forum for sharing cutting-edge imaging methods and applications with the wider community.

Virtual Pub in numbers

Strong engagement from a growing community

In total, 39 Virtual Pub events were held in 2025, attracting 3 620 cumulative attendees - a clear increase compared with around 3 000 attendees in the previous years. The average attendance per session reached 93 participants, with 12 events welcoming more than 100 attendees and one standout session exceeding 200 participants. This particularly well-attended talk, delivered by Pete Bankhead from the University of Edinburgh, focussed on QuPath for bioimage analysis (watch the recording) as part of the Image Data Community Days, highlighted the strong community interest in practical tools for image analysis.

Taken together, these numbers reflect both the breadth of the Euro-BioImaging community and the continued demand for accessible, online knowledge exchange across countries, disciplines, and career stages.

Diverse methods, wide-ranging applications

The 2025 Virtual Pub programme showcased the remarkable diversity of modern imaging, spanning both methodological innovation and application-driven research. On the methods side, talks explored advanced light and electron microscopy, magnetic particle imaging, PET, MRI, correlative and multimodal imaging strategies, mass spectrometry–based imaging, and emerging approaches in image analysis with a particular focus on AI tools and data integration. Many of these sessions highlighted developments driven by Euro-BioImaging Nodes, where technical expertise and facility-level innovation play a central role in advancing imaging capabilities.

Complementing this strong methodological focus, the programme also highlighted the wide range of applications of these advanced imaging technologies. Speakers demonstrated how advanced imaging is applied in areas such as cell and developmental biology, plant and environmental research, neuroscience, cancer biology, exposure research, infectious diseases, and translational studies. By combining the focus on technical application details in the context of concrete scientific questions, these sessions illustrated how imaging expertise, including that available at the Euro-BioImaging Nodes, directly enables impactful research across disciplines.

Euro-BioImaging Nodes and users at the centre

A defining feature of the Virtual Pub in 2025 was the prominent role of Euro-BioImaging Nodes and users within the programme. 14 presentations were directly delivered by Euro-BioImaging Node experts, offering first-hand perspectives on how state-of-the-art imaging services are developed, implemented, and accessed in practice. User presentations included researchers supported by COMULISglobe and canSERV (GA# 101058260) funding to access Euro-BioImaging Node services. Through these contributions, the Virtual Pub provided insight into real user projects, highlighted the added value of open access to advanced technologies, and showcased the depth of expertise embedded within the Euro-BioImaging infrastructure.

Thematic series with partner communities

In addition to the regular weekly sessions, the 2025 Virtual Pub included several thematic series organised together with partner communities, further strengthening links across the imaging ecosystem. Three events formed part of a Correlative Imaging series co-organised with COMULISglobe, focusing on strategies that integrate complementary imaging modalities. The programme also featured five volume electron microscopy (volumeEM) presentations, reflecting the growing importance of large-scale ultrastructural imaging, and four sessions organised with ISCaM, dedicated to imaging approaches in cancer metabolism. These series provided continuity across sessions and created space for deeper community-driven discussions linking Euro-BioImaging and our partners communities around shared scientific and technical challenges.

Special Edition Virtual Pubs

Two Special Edition Virtual Pubs in 2025 were particular highlights offering extended, themed formats that allowed participants to explore imaging beyond its traditional applications, organised under the EVOLVE project (GA# 101130986). One Special Edition focused on Art and Archaeology, highlighting how advanced imaging contributes to cultural heritage research and conservation. The second explored Imaging in Food Science, showcasing how imaging methods can be applied to understand food structure, composition, and processing. Together, these editions underlined the versatility of imaging technologies and form an important pillar of our EVOLVE-supported strategy to increase the visibility of Euro-BioImaging expertise to new user communities.

• Watch recordings (Virtual Pub "Imaging in Food Science")
• Watch recordings (Virtual Pub "Art & Archaeology")

Looking ahead

With strong attendance, a diverse and carefully balanced programme, and active participation from Nodes, users, and partner communities, the 2025 Virtual Pub has once again proven to be a cornerstone of Euro-BioImaging’s community engagement and training activities. Building on this momentum, in 2026 we look forward to continuing to welcome everyone to the Virtual Pub as an open and welcoming space for sharing knowledge, fostering collaboration, and connecting Europe’s imaging community.

Key numbers at a glance

Virtual Pub 2025 in numbers
Reach
• 39 Virtual Pub events delivered in 2025
• 3 620 cumulative attendees across all sessions

Euro-BioImaging Nodes
• 14 presentations delivered by Euro-BioImaging Node experts
• 2 Special Edition Virtual Pubs showcasing Euro-BioImaging expertise to new user communities

Thematic series & partnerships
• 3 Correlative Imaging Series events co-organised with COMULISglobe
• 5 volumeEM presentations highlighting large-scale ultrastructural imaging
• 4 ISCaM sessions focused on imaging in cancer metabolism