The annual meeting of the European Light Microscopy Initiative (ELMI) took place at EMBL Heidelberg from June 3rd to 6th. As a conference representing one of Euro-BioImaging’s core communities, ELMI is always a highlight for our community and our team, but this edition - the 25th anniversary edition - took things to a new level, with many contributions to the conference programme from Euro-BioImaging Nodes, the Euro-BioImaging Hub team, and our partners. In addition, we met an amazing number of researchers, core facility staff and industry partners at our booth. Below we feature some highlights and share some resources from this fantastic meeting.
Core Facility Day – from the community, for the community
The Core Facility Day is the traditional satellite event of ELMI, featuring sessions of interest for Core Facility Staff and a program set by a community group. The Core Facility day is seeing growing participation and is an active discussion forum.
This year’s Core Facility Day featured main sessions on Quality Management (QM), Quality Control (QC) Image Data Management, and Career Paths.
The QM session included very interesting presentations and discussions from different company representatives about the tools that exist to support core facility staff in QC and QM processes, and how companies themselves perform QC on their instruments.
From quality management to image data management
The Image Data Management session, co-organised by Caterina Strambio De Castilla, Johanna Bischof, and Stephanie Weidtkamp-Peters, focused this year on the practical journey to setting up data management practices at imaging facilities. Milan Ešner from the CELLIM facility at CEITEC, part of Euro-BioImaging’s Brno Node, shared his facility’s journey from setting up facility-internal data management solutions and practices, to integrating with institutional and national level tools and solutions. The presentations were followed by an interactive live survey, which provided valuable insights into the community’s priorities.
When discussing FAIR RDM tools (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable research data management), metadata tools and standards were clearly identified as the most urgent need of the community. This result highlights a shared need across the community to improve the collection, standardisation, and sharing of metadata.
Focus on Career Paths
The Career Path topic was a new focus area in the ELMI Core Facility Day, but the great presentations and active panel discussion highlighted the need for more conversations around this topic. Yara Reis from Global BioImaging (GBI) framed the discussion by sharing findings from several global surveys conducted by GBI, Royal Microscopy Society (RMS), African BioImaging Consortium (ABIC), Max Planck BioImaging Network (MaxBI), and Australia’s Microscopy and Microanalyses Society (AMMS). The data revealed a general need for tailored training, clearer professional recognition, and stronger institutional support for imaging professionals. The career path panel, moderated by Elisa d’Este (MaxBi and GerBI), brought diverse global perspectives into focus. Patricia Rodrigues (Portugal) shared insights from the Euro-BioImaging EVOLVE mentoring program; Caron Jacobs (South Africa) highlighted mobility and mentorship through the African Microscopy Initiative (AMI) and the PiTCH program; and Sylvia Olberg (Germany) offered reflections shaped by her transitions between academia, industry, and core facility work.
A growing list of shared materials and resources for imaging scientists’ career paths is made available on the Global BioImaging website.
Panel discussion at the ELMI Career Paths session. From left to right Yara Reis (Global BioImaging- EMBL), Michiel Adrianus Korste (HR- EMBL), Patrícia Alexandra Rosa Porfírio Rodrigues (GIMM, PPBI Node), Sylvia Olberg (University Hospital Heidelberg) and Caron Jacobs (University of Cape Town) led by Elisa D’Este.
Remembering Spencer Shorte
The Core Facility Day closed with a moving note by Ralph Parmisano and a tribute video honouring Spencer Shorte — a pioneer and connector in the global imaging community – who passed away suddenly, and too soon - earlier this year. His legacy continues to inspire and strengthen the imaging core facility field, and his contributions were acknowledged with deep respect and gratitude.
A photo from the moving session that gave tribute to Spencer Shorte.
Celebrating 25 years
Following the opening keynote, the assembled audience had an opportunity to look back on 25 years of ELMI history, presented by Timo Zimmermann (EMBL IC), one of the original ELMI community members. From humble beginnings in a seminar room at EMBL in 2000 the ELMI community and meeting has grown incredibly with more than 500 attendees this year. With it’s signature programme and event location travelling to a new European location each year, ELMI is one of the cornerstones of the active European Imaging landscape. The discussions, experience sharing between core facility staff, and community building from the early ELMI meetings, also played a critical role in the setting up of Euro-BioImaging, which carries the welcoming and inclusive ELMI community and collaboration spirit forward in its core mission.
Scientific Sessions
ELMI 2025 featured a particularly international lineup of presenters, highlighting latest technical developments across a wide range of microscopy techniques – from swept lightsheets (Elizabeth Hillman -St Jude Children’s Hospital) and tissue clearing of whole mice (Ali Ertuerk – LMU Munich / Helmholtz Munich), to new biosensors (Kazuhiro Aoki – Kyoto University) and single molecule imaging (Jan-Hendrik Spille – University of Illinois Chicago).
Euro-BioImaging and Global BioImaging
Euro-BioImaging and Global BioImaging, represented by Antje Keppler and Johanna Bischof, also presented updates and opportunities for the assembled community, highlighting recent developments, funding opportunities for researchers from around the world to access imaging facilities, and opportunities for core facility staff. Global BioImaging also celebrated its 14th member - Its network grew with the signature of the Global BioImaging Memorandum of Understanding by the German BioImaging community, represented by Stephanie Weidtkamp-Peters and Janina Hanne.
Some photos from ELMI
Data session
In a tough timeslot on Friday morning, after a very lively ELMI party on Thursday evening, the image data experts rallied the community and delivered an outstanding closing session. Estibaliz Gómez de Mariscal from ITQB Nova in Portugal, an important contributor in the AI4Life project and Euro-BioImaging Scientific Ambassador, gave a presentation on how deep learning methods can help to push the limits of live microscopy and reduce the impact of photo damage.
Estibaliz Gómez de Mariscal from ITQB Nova in Portugal is Euro-BioImaging Scientific Ambassador and part of the AI4Life Project. Here she takes the stage at ELMI 2025.
Interactions with industry take centre stage at ELMI
The second pillar of the ELMI program, in addition to the scientific sessions, are very active industry workshops and a large industry exhibition and representation. Representatives from companies producing microscopes and components, imaging software solutions, and other microscopy supporting tools, consistently make up about 30% of the ELMI audience and the frank and open discussions and feedback between core facility staff and company representatives are a hallmark of ELMI.
This year featured workshops from more than 25 different companies and for Euro-BioImaging this always represents a great opportunity to connect with the members of the Euro-BioImaging Industry Board as well as make new connections.
The EBIB also held its regular in person meeting at ELMI. This meeting was the opportunity to welcome the new EBIB member ProteinTech and discuss collaboration opportunities around training, and plan for future events.
Community workshops
In addition to the company workshops, in recent years ELMI also features community workshops, allowing hands-on demos and smaller group discussions and training on specific interest topics. This year’s programme featured 12 community workshops – mostly focussed on tools for quality assessment and aspects of image data management.
Led by Isabel Kemmer, Data Steward at Euro-BioImaging, the workshop "FAIR 101 - Navigating FAIR Data from Principles to Practice" offered a focused, hands-on introduction to the FAIR principles for bioimaging data. Over the course of an hour, ten participants engaged in interactive exercises and discussions that demystified the challenges of managing complex, multidimensional imaging datasets. Isabel guided attendees through practical steps for implementing FAIR—Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable—data practices, covering essential topics such as metadata annotation, data management planning, and repository selection.
Isabel Kemmer, Data Steward at Euro-BioImaging, the workshop "FAIR 101 - Navigating FAIR Data from Principles to Practice."
ELMI 2026 in Portugal
ELMI 2025 was a big moment in the 2025 event calendar – we thank the active community for their engagement and the organising team for all their efforts and are already looking forward to ELMI 2026, which will be hosted by Euro-BioImaging’s PPBI Node in Coimbra, Portugal.
The team from Portugal that will be hosting ELMI 2026 in Coimbra!
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