Fantastic ELMI 2023 Conference in Noordwijkerhout!

This year, the European Light Microscopy Initiative meeting took place in Noodwijkerhout, the Netherlands, organised by NL-BioImaging. Several Hub team members were able to attend this important community meeting. We truly enjoyed the science, the workshops, and the opportunity to exchange with our Nodes, friends and industry partners! Here are some of our memories and some photos of the event.

ELMI started out with an entertaining opening ceremony animated by conference organizers Ben Giepmans and Eric Reits. The welcome ceremony was followed by an excellent keynote talk from Jan Ellenberg of EMBL, introduced by Dorus Gadella. Jan Ellenberg’s talk showcased incredible imaging of cell division across scales from the genome to embryo and closed with the role Euro-BioImaging and Global BIoImaging play in making technology & expertise available to a wider scientific community. As ELMI 2023 took place on the 300th anniversary of the death of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the famous microscopist was present at the event and we were lucky to get a photo of him at the booth we shared with NL-BioImaging (see below).

The scientific programme started on Wednesday, June 7, until Friday, June 9. It included six scientific sessions featuring topics such as Functional imaging, New technologies, Data management & analysis, Intravital & light sheet microscopy, Multimodal-imaging and High content imaging. Many staff from Euro-BioImaging Nodes presented their work in these domains. In addition, the poster session on the evening of Wednesday, June 7, gave Euro-BioImaging Hub Team colleagues the opportunity to present the infrastructure, new technologies and image data services. The Euro-BioImaging session on Thursday, June 8, also gave us an opportunity to share our news and community building activities.

Outstanding science at ELMI, including many presentations and posters from Euro-BioImaging Nodes.

The Euro-BioImaging Industry Board (EBIB) was also present at ELMI. Several of its members contributed to a presentation of a new initiative aiming to standardize and increase the uptake of Smart Microscopy in the imaging community. This initiative was born out of a joint workshop between Euro-BioImaging and EBIB in fall 2022.

Overall, companies in the imaging sector made up almost 50% of ELMI participants this year. They organized a large number of workshops showcasing various technology developments by the industry partners, even moving beyond the light microscopy field in correlative approaches.

Great conference and looking forward to next year

We thoroughly enjoyed the exchanges we had at our joint booth NL-BioImaging and want to thank everyone who stopped by. We want to thank our Nodes for being present at the booth, sharing their work, and for their enthusiasm and efforts to promote Euro-BioImaging throughout the event. We also want to recognize the hard work of the organizing committee & thank the sponsors for the social events. It was a wonderful conference. Hope to see you again next year in Liverpool!