Exchanging with the BioImage Analysis Community

On November 24-25 2025, Euro-BioImaging Scientific Ambassador, Virginia Silio, attended the Crick BioImage Analysis Symposium (CBIAS) 2025, held in London. The two-day event brought together around 100 participants, including bioimage analysts, software developers, core facility staff, PhD students, and postdoctoral researchers, with a shared focus on image analysis for biomedical research. This event was a great place for Virginia Silio, a Confocal Technician at the University College London, to represent Euro-BioImaging and connect with the bioimage analysis community.

CBIAS 2025 offered a programme of invited and selected talks, poster sessions, and panel discussions covering topics such as user-friendly workflows, widely used tools like ilastik and TrackMate, machine learning approaches, and emerging methods for handling large multidimensional datasets. The atmosphere of the meeting was open and collaborative, encouraging exchange between researchers working in diverse environments.

As Scientific Ambassador of Euro-BioImaging, Virginia Silio  presented a poster introducing the Scientific Ambassador programme and its role in strengthening imaging and analysis communities, which is available online here. The poster sparked discussions with attendees interested in Euro-BioImaging services, training resources, and the ongoing BioImaging UK call for bioimage analysts. 

“From my perspective, the meeting reinforced how important it is for core facility staff to stay connected with the analysis community. Even with limited coding experience, I found many talks and posters understandable and directly relevant to my work. I left with practical ideas I can share with users, including approaches to reproducibility, quality control, and workflow design,” said Virginia. “CBIAS is one of the few meetings focused entirely on bioimage data analysis without becoming inaccessible to researchers outside computational disciplines. It is friendly and collaborative, making it ideal for facility staff, biologists, and early-career researchers who might otherwise feel intimidated by highly technical analysis meetings,” she concluded.

Attending CBIAS 2025 provided a valuable opportunity to raise awareness of Euro-BioImaging services within the bioimage analysis community, to engage with researchers and analysts working with microscopy data, and to gain insight into current challenges around image analysis, software sustainability, and practical workflows. The symposium also enabled new and renewed connections with colleagues from the UK and across Europe. 

Thank you, Virginia, for representing Euro-BioImaging at the symposium, presenting our Scientific Ambassador programme, and engaging with participants around our services, training resources, and current initiatives.