New Journal of Microscopy Editors
Professor Dylan Owen, Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy, University of Birmingham, UK, and Dr Venera Weinhardt, Centre for Organismal Studies, Heidelberg University, Germany, have recently joined the Journal as Scientific Editors.
Professor Owen completed an MSci in Physics in 2004, MRes in Chemical Biology in 2005 and PhD in biomedical imaging in 2008, developing spectral and lifetime fluorescence microscopy platforms for studying cell membrane biophysics, under the supervision of Profs Paul French and Tony Magee at Imperial College London. He then moved to the University of New South Wales to work in the lab of the late Prof Katharine Gaus, applying single-molecule localisation microscopy (SMLM) and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) to the study of T cell signalling.
In 2013, he started his own lab at King’s College London, developing new SMLM analysis methods and using advanced fluorescence imaging in the study of membrane biophysics and immunology. Since 2019 he has been Interdisciplinary Chair of Immunology and Mathematics at the University of Birmingham, where his lab has several research themes including AI-driven bioimage analysis and community data sharing initiatives.
Dr. Venera Weinhardt is a project leader at the Centre for Organismal Studies, University of Heidelberg, where she develops advanced imaging techniques to study cellular and organismal structure.
With a background in physics and over a decade of experience in X-ray imaging, she leads an internationally recognised research group focused on innovative methods such as in vivo imaging, novel contrast mechanisms, and high-throughput analysis workflows.
Her expertise lies in life science applications, particularly in developing novel contrast mechanisms, advancing in vivo and low-dose imaging, and designing new imaging geometries. She has also contributed to the development of restoration, image formation, and analysis workflows.
As a recipient of the Walter Benjamin Program from the German Research Foundation, Dr. Weinhardt joined the group of Prof. Carolyn Larabell at UCSF and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. There, she focused on enhancing the spatial resolution and image quality of soft X-ray microscopy, applying these advances to study cells in both normal and infected states (including HSV-1 and SARS-CoV-2).
Dr Weinhardt is also dedicated to advancing laboratory-based soft X-ray tomography (SXT), with her research supported by the EU’s Research and Innovation Act (CoCID project). She has demonstrated the power of quantitative, high-throughput SXT imaging for investigating pathogen-infected cells, highlighting the potential of this state-of-the-art technology. To complement SXT, she develops correlative imaging modalities, such as axial super-resolution fluorescence microscopy for imaging cancer and immune cells, supported by the MSCA doctoral networks of the EU (CLEXM project).