Amanda Lund
Title of Talk: Lymphatic remodeling regulates germinal center dynamics
Dr. Lund received a PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York and completed postdoctoral training at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. She is currently an Associate Professor with tenure at the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York. Dr. Lund and colleagues established the paradigm that tumor-associated lymphatic vessel remodeling regulates anti-tumor immune surveillance. Her group aims to understand the basic mechanisms that govern lymphatic/immune interactions to identify translational strategies to tune lymphatic transport to optimize adaptive immune responses and reinvigorate anti-tumor immunity.
For more information, please visit her website.
Balázs Enyedi
Title of Talk: Illuminating Chemoattractant Production During Neutrophil Migration
Balázs Enyedi is an associate professor in the Department of Physiology at Semmelweis University, where he leads a research group focusing on tissue damage-induced inflammation and intercellular communication pathways driving leukocyte migration. After earning his medical degree and PhD from Semmelweis University, where he studied reactive oxygen species and developed tools to measure intracellular hydrogen peroxide levels, Balázs pursued postdoctoral research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. At Sloan Kettering Institute, he described a novel tissue damage detection pathway involving cell and nuclear swelling mediated by arachidonic acid metabolites. Since establishing his own lab at Semmelweis University in 2017, Balázs has developed cutting-edge fluorescent biosensors to investigate the spatiotemporal dynamics of chemoattractant production.
For more information, please visit his website.
Danijela Vignjevic
Title of Talk: Disruption of Fibroblast Contractility Promotes Colonic Wound Repair
Danijela Matic Vignjevic was trained as a molecular biologist at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. She completed her PhD in Cell Biology at Northwestern University, Chicago, where she studied the role of the actin cytoskeleton in cell migration. Following her PhD, she pursued postdoctoral research at Institut Curie, focusing on mouse models of colon cancer metastasis. In 2013, she established her independent research team at Institut Curie, where she study how epithelial cells interact with their microenvironment in processes such as homeostasis, wound repair, and cancer invasion. Her research strategy combines cell biology and mechanobiology techniques, coupled with advanced live-cell imaging, using a variety of model systems including 2D and 3D in vitro cell cultures, ex vivo tissue slices, and transgenic mouse models.
Ed Roberts
Title of Talk: Failure to activate lymph node resident cDC1 results in poorly functional anti-tumour CD8 T cell responses
Ed Roberts carried out his PhD with Doug Fearon on the role of fibroblasts in regulating anti-tumour immunity. He subsequently carried out a CRI Irvington Postdoctoral fellowship with Max Krummel at UCSF where he started working on dendritic cells in cancer. In 2019 he established his lab at the CRUK Scotland Institute where his lab investigates how tissue derived signals are transmitted to direct T cell priming in the lymph node.
Johanne Jacobsen
Title of Talk: Dynamics of T cell subsets controlling the Germinal Center reaction
Johanne Jacobsen recently started her research group at Rikshospitalet at The University of Oslo after a decade of work at The Rockefeller University and The Whitehead Insitute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Here she worked with Gabriel Victora and studied the mechanisms shaping the quality of B cells in the germinal center reaction. Much of her studies focused on how T cell subsets control the outcome of the germinal center reaction and how these can be tuned to modify GC B cell quality. She started her laboratory with an ERC starting grant at the University of Oslo and has set up intravital microscopy to study the dynamic interplay of T cell subsets in shaping different GC responses, with a special emphasis on intravital longitudinal studies.
For more information, please visit her website.
Marc Bajénoff
Title of Talk: Myeloid cell-Stroma interactions
Dr. Marc Bajenoff performed his doctoral training under the supervision of Dr S. Guerder at the Centre d’Immunologie de Marseille Luminy (CIML). He then joined the laboratory of Prof Glaichenhaus (Valbonne, France) and Prof R. Germain at the Lymphocyte Biology Section, National Institutes of Health for his post-doctoral studies. Here, he developed the first applications of the 2-photon methods for intravital imaging to an extensive analysis of the function of stromal elements within lymphoid tissues. In 2010, he established the “Immunobiology of stromal cells” group at CIML and in 2015, he was awarded an ERC consolidator grant to study the dynamics of lymphoid stromal cells. His general research interests are in understanding the immunobiology of stromal cells and how these versatile cells control the immune system at multiple levels. More recently, his laboratory has developed a strong interest in studying the crosstalk between stromal cells and macrophages across tissues.
For more information, please visit his website.
Marco DeGiovanni
Title of Talk: Decoding immune cell regionalization in mucosal-associated lymphoid tissues
Dr. Marco De Giovanni is a leading immunologist and Group Leader at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy. With a Ph.D. earned under the mentorship of Matteo Iannacone at the same institute and postdoctoral training with HHMI investigator Jason Cyster at UCSF, Marco has established himself as a pioneer in studying immune cell dynamics. His work explores the spatial compartmentalization of immune cells and the critical roles of interferons and G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) in orchestrating their positioning and function. Marco’s academic journey is marked by a string of high-impact publications, where he often serves as the first or corresponding author. His innovative approach to immunological research has garnered prestigious funding, including the ERC Starting Grant, Armenise Harvard Career Development Award, and AIRC Start-Up Grant. Marco’s current research focuses on immune cell regionalization within mucosal tissues and its implications for inflammation, infection, and cancer. His work bridges fundamental science and translational applications, laying the groundwork for tissue-specific therapeutic strategies.
Mauro Gaya
Title of Talk: B Cell Instruction to Mucosal Antigens
EMBO Young Investigator Lecture
Mauro Gaya obtained his BSc degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Buenos Aires (2011, Argentina) and his PhD from the University College London (2015, UK). He performed his PhD work at the London Research Institute in the laboratory of Dr. Facundo Batista. While there, he uncovered a role for lymph node resident macrophages in the induction of B cell responses upon infection (Gaya et al. Science 2015). Mauro Gaya performed a short postdoctoral stage in between the Francis Crick Institute (London, UK) and the Ragon Institute of MIT and Harvard (Cambridge, USA) still with Dr. Batista. His work led to the discovery of how innate T cell populations initiate the seeding of germinal center reactions during infection (Gaya et al. Cell 2018). Mauro Gaya was recruited to the Luminy Center for Immunology (Marseille, France) in 2018, where he studies B cell immunity in barrier tissues (Gregoire et al. Immunity 2022). During this period, Dr Gaya became a Marie Curie fellow, tenured researcher at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and EMBO Young Investigator. At present, his lab is financed by the ERC Starting Grant program to study the role of IgA and IgE in B cell memory.
Menna R. Clatworthy
Title of Talk: Tissue immunity in human organs
Menna Clatworthy is the Professor of Translational Immunology at the University of Cambridge Department of Medicine. She also works clinically as an Honorary Consultant Nephrologist and holds an Associate Faculty position in Cellular Genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. Her research is focused on understanding how tissue-environments shape resident immune cell function, and how tissue immune networks interact across organs. She is also an active participant in the Human Cell Atlas Project, utilizing single cell technologies to better understand the cellular landscape of the human organs.
For more information, please visit her website
Sponsored by
Milka Sarris
Title of Talk: Visualising neutrophil behaviour and fates during inflammatory responses
Milka Sarris did her PhD studies with Dr Alex Betz at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge, UK, where she studied the formation of immunological synapses between immune cells in mouse models. She was awarded her PhD in 2008 and then joined the group of Dr. Philippe Herbomel in Institut Pasteur in Paris for her post-doctoral studies, where she started working with zebrafish on the fundamentals of leukocyte movement mechanisms in vivo. In 2014 she was awarded an MRC Career Development award to set up her independent group in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience in Cambridge (PDN). She was then appointed as Assistant Professor in PDN, as well as Fellow and Lecturer in Trinity College in 2016. Since then, her group has been developing high-end imaging, genetic and optogenetic approaches to dissect leukocyte guidance and signalling dynamics in vivo. She was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2022 and appointed to a Professorship in Cell and Tissue Biology in 2024.
Nadav Yayon
Title of Talk: Spatial knowledge accumulation in the human thymus and beyond
Dr. Nadav Yayon is a senior research scientist at the Tissue Scale Biology Platform of the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, University of Cambridge, following his postdoctoral research with Sarah Teichmann, John Marioni, and Virginie Uhlmann. He specialises in spatial transcriptomics, light microscopy, computational neuroscience, and machine learning. Dr. Yayon recently developed a method to establish a Common Coordinates Framework (CCF) for the human thymus, facilitating the creation of the first spatial atlas of this organ across development. Nadav is now interested in mapping human organ systems across scales, relying on spatial and morphological landmarks for data integration. His work has contributed to numerous international academic collaborations, as well as partnerships with industry to advance spatial technologies.
Nicolas Gaudenzio
Title of Talk: Peripheral neuroimmune interactions in health and disease
Dr Nico Gaudenzio is Research Director at the French national institute of health (Inserm) and Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at the biotech Genoskin (Toulouse FRA, Salem MA USA). Nico received a Master’s in bioengineering and a PhD in Immunology at the University of Toulouse, France and completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Stanford (CA USA). His work has contributed substantially to identifying molecular and cellular targets involved in allergic and non-allergic inflammation. Nico currently leads a large research program to investigate the role of neuroimmune interactions in health and disease. He is three times Laureate of the European Research Council and has received international prizes such as the ACTERIA Early Career Research Prize by the European Federation of Immunological Societies (EFIS) and the Rising Star Award by the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS). He is a member of the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI).
For more information, please visit his LinkedIn and his website
Paul Kubes
Title of Talk: Imaging immunity in sterile injury
Dr Paul Kubes trained at Queen’s University before going to do a postdoc with Dr Neil Granger at Louisiana State University where he fell in love with imaging and first described regulators of leukocyte recruitment in sterile injury. In 2008, he adopted new imaging modalities including spinning disk and two photon microscopy and began imaging liver, lung, skin and various other organs trying to understand the role of various myeloid cells in homeostasis as well as in infections and sterile injury. Presently he is moving from Calgary to Queen’s University where he is building a new imaging center. His interests now are more and more focussed on how macrophages become organ specific and behave within tissues during homeostasis and during various perturbations including cancer. For more information please visit his website
Sponsored by
Ron Germain
Title of Talk: Combining Dynamic and Highly Multiplex 2D and 3D Static Optical Imaging Methods to Probe Immune Function in Tissues
Ronald N. Germain received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1976. Since then he has investigated basic immunobiology, first on the faculty at Harvard, then at NIAID, NIH. He has contributed to understanding MHC class II molecules, antigen processing, and T cell recognition, more recently pioneering analysis of the immune system using dynamic and static in situ microscopy. He has published more than 400 scholarly research papers and reviews and trained more than 80 fellows. Among other honors, he has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, EMBO, AAAS, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Kunkel Society, named a Distinguished Fellow by the American Association of Immunologists, and designated a Distinguished Investigator by NIH.
Sanjiv Luther
Title of Talk: Crosstalk between dendritic cells and fibroblasts shapes T zone compartmentalization and niches
Sanjiv Luther studied cell biology at the ETH in Zürich. He received his PhD in 1996 from the University of Lausanne for his work on anti-viral immune responses in the laboratory of Hans Acha-Orbea which was done in part in the laboratory of Ian MacLennan (Birmingham, UK). Sanjiv then moved to the laboratory of Jason Cyster at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of California, San Francisco where he investigated the role of chemotactic factors in lymphoid tissue development and function. In 2003 he joined the Department of Immunobiology (formerly Biochemistry) as Assistant Professor funded by a career-development award from the Swiss National Science Foundation. In 2009 he became Associate Professor and in 2021 Full Professor. His current research focuses on the characterization of fibroblastic stromal cells found within secondary lymphoid organs, going from development to homeostasis and immunity.
Steffen Jung
Title of Talk: Dissecting tissue macrophages by origins and genetics
Steffen Jung performed his Ph.D. studies in the iInstitute of Genetics, Cologne. He used the then newly introduced gene targeting technology to define cis-acting control elements driving non-coding ’sterile‘ transcripts in immunoglobulin class switch recombination. In 1993, Steffen moved for post-doctoral training to Israel studying transcription factors and kinases in T cell signaling. In 1997, Steffen joined the lab of Dan Littman at the Skirball Institute for Molecular Pathogenesis, NYU Medical Center. There he generated CX3CR1gfp reporter mice and developed, in collaboration with Richard Lang, a novel diphtheria toxin receptor (DTR)-based cell ablation strategy (CD11c-DTR mice). In 2002 Steffen joined the faculty of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel. Current work of the Jung lab focuses on in vivo aspects of mononuclear phagocytes, including the development and differential functions of monocytes and macrophages. The team applies intra-vital imaging, conditional cell, and gene ablation, combined with advanced genomic analyses to investigate the biology of these cells in health and disease. Particular focus is given to monocyte subsets, intestinal and pulmonary macrophages, as well as microglia and CNS-border-associated macrophages. Moreover, the lab got interested in mycobiota and the interplay of fungi among themselves and with the host. For more information, please visit his website
Susan Schwab
Title of Talk: Far from home: T cell migration through non-lymphoid organs
The Schwab lab investigates trafficking of normal and transformed T cells. Much of the lab’s focus has been on how the residence time of normal T cells in tissues is determined. They have established that a gradient of the signaling lipid sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) is required to guide T cells out of lymphoid organs, defined many of the key cells and enzymes that control this gradient, and developed novel tools to map the gradient. Their work has suggested new targets for immune suppressive drugs that modulate S1P signaling, trapping T cells in lymphoid organs and preventing them from accessing sites of inflammation. The lab has also turned their attention to trafficking of transformed T cells. They have found that T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) cells require the chemokine receptor CXCR4 for disease progression, a result that suggests a new strategy for T-ALL therapy. For more information please visit her website
Sponsored by
Tamara Girbl-Huemer
Title of Talk: Imaging the post-endothelial phase of leukocyte transmigration through blood vessel walls in vivo
Tamara Girbl completed her PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Salzburg, Austria, studying leukemic B cell adhesion and migration in microenvironmental niches. As a postdoctoral Fellow of the British Heart Foundation, she joined Prof. Sussan Nourshargh’s group at Queen Mary University of London, UK to study chemotactic cues guiding neutrophil migration across blood vessel walls via intravital microscopy. After a short post-doctoral research stay in Prof. Michael Sixt (Institute of Science and Technology Austria), Tamara joined the Rudolf Virchow Center at the University of Würzburg as a Junior Group Leader in 2020. With her team, she investigates the mechanisms mediating leukocyte breaching of blood vessel walls during inflammatory responses, using intravital microscopy as a key technique. Specifically, her research aims to unravel how pericytes – the mural cells of microvessels- impact leukocyte transmigration and function during innate and adaptive immune responses. For more information please visit her website
Tim Lämmermann
Title of Talk: Surprises from imaging immune cell dynamics in the allergic skin
Tim Lämmermann is a full professor and Director of the Institute for Medical Biochemistry at the Center for the Molecular Biology of Inflammation (ZMBE) at the University Münster since October 2023. He studied Molecular Medicine in Erlangen, then moved to Munich for his PhD thesis at the Max Planck Institute in Martinsried, before he then did his Postdoc at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda (USA). In 2015 he became independent Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany, where he headed the research group “Immune Cell Dynamics”. His lab investigates the basic cell biological mechanisms that shape single cell and population dynamics of immune cells in the complexity of inflamed and infected tissues. By using a broad range of microscopy and imaging techniques, his team explores the strategies that cells of the innate immune response have evolved to move individually or in concert with other cells in order to achieve together an optimal immune response. For more information please visit his website
Sponsored by
Wolfgang Kastenmüller
Title of Talk:Cellular feed-back regulation of CD8 T cell differentiation
Wolfgang Kastenmüller studied Medicine in Munich and did his M.D. in tumor immunology. Following his specialization in medical microbiology and virology, he did his post-doc at the NIH with Ron Germain where he studied T cell dynamics and lymphocyte migration in secondary lymphoid organs. In 2013 he started his independent group in Bonn and elucidated spatiotemporal aspects of CD4 help for CTL and investigated dendritic cells behavior and cooperativity during viral infections. In 2017 he was selected as Max-Planck Research Group Leader and together with Georg Gasteiger founded the Institute for Systems Immunology in Würzburg. In 2019 he received an ERC consolidator award to continue his work on CD8 T cell biology and dendritic cell development and started to investigate the function of unconventional T cells. For more information please visit his website.
Amanda Lund
Title of Talk: Lymphatic remodeling regulates germinal center dynamics
Dr. Lund received a PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York and completed postdoctoral training at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. She is currently an Associate Professor with tenure at the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York. Dr. Lund and colleagues established the paradigm that tumor-associated lymphatic vessel remodeling regulates anti-tumor immune surveillance. Her group aims to understand the basic mechanisms that govern lymphatic/immune interactions to identify translational strategies to tune lymphatic transport to optimize adaptive immune responses and reinvigorate anti-tumor immunity.
For more information, please visit her website.
Balázs Enyedi
Title of Talk: Illuminating Chemoattractant Production During Neutrophil Migration
Balázs Enyedi is an associate professor in the Department of Physiology at Semmelweis University, where he leads a research group focusing on tissue damage-induced inflammation and intercellular communication pathways driving leukocyte migration. After earning his medical degree and PhD from Semmelweis University, where he studied reactive oxygen species and developed tools to measure intracellular hydrogen peroxide levels, Balázs pursued postdoctoral research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. At Sloan Kettering Institute, he described a novel tissue damage detection pathway involving cell and nuclear swelling mediated by arachidonic acid metabolites. Since establishing his own lab at Semmelweis University in 2017, Balázs has developed cutting-edge fluorescent biosensors to investigate the spatiotemporal dynamics of chemoattractant production.
For more information, please visit his website.
Danijela Vignjevic
Title of Talk: Disruption of Fibroblast Contractility Promotes Colonic Wound Repair
Danijela Matic Vignjevic was trained as a molecular biologist at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. She completed her PhD in Cell Biology at Northwestern University, Chicago, where she studied the role of the actin cytoskeleton in cell migration. Following her PhD, she pursued postdoctoral research at Institut Curie, focusing on mouse models of colon cancer metastasis. In 2013, she established her independent research team at Institut Curie, where she study how epithelial cells interact with their microenvironment in processes such as homeostasis, wound repair, and cancer invasion. Her research strategy combines cell biology and mechanobiology techniques, coupled with advanced live-cell imaging, using a variety of model systems including 2D and 3D in vitro cell cultures, ex vivo tissue slices, and transgenic mouse models.
Ed Roberts
Title of Talk: Failure to activate lymph node resident cDC1 results in poorly functional anti-tumour CD8 T cell responses
Ed Roberts carried out his PhD with Doug Fearon on the role of fibroblasts in regulating anti-tumour immunity. He subsequently carried out a CRI Irvington Postdoctoral fellowship with Max Krummel at UCSF where he started working on dendritic cells in cancer. In 2019 he established his lab at the CRUK Scotland Institute where his lab investigates how tissue derived signals are transmitted to direct T cell priming in the lymph node.
Johanne Jacobsen
Title of Talk: Dynamics of T cell subsets controlling the Germinal Center reaction
Johanne Jacobsen recently started her research group at Rikshospitalet at The University of Oslo after a decade of work at The Rockefeller University and The Whitehead Insitute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Here she worked with Gabriel Victora and studied the mechanisms shaping the quality of B cells in the germinal center reaction. Much of her studies focused on how T cell subsets control the outcome of the germinal center reaction and how these can be tuned to modify GC B cell quality. She started her laboratory with an ERC starting grant at the University of Oslo and has set up intravital microscopy to study the dynamic interplay of T cell subsets in shaping different GC responses, with a special emphasis on intravital longitudinal studies.
For more information, please visit her website.
Marc Bajénoff
Title of Talk: Myeloid cell-Stroma interactions
Dr. Marc Bajenoff performed his doctoral training under the supervision of Dr S. Guerder at the Centre d’Immunologie de Marseille Luminy (CIML). He then joined the laboratory of Prof Glaichenhaus (Valbonne, France) and Prof R. Germain at the Lymphocyte Biology Section, National Institutes of Health for his post-doctoral studies. Here, he developed the first applications of the 2-photon methods for intravital imaging to an extensive analysis of the function of stromal elements within lymphoid tissues. In 2010, he established the “Immunobiology of stromal cells” group at CIML and in 2015, he was awarded an ERC consolidator grant to study the dynamics of lymphoid stromal cells. His general research interests are in understanding the immunobiology of stromal cells and how these versatile cells control the immune system at multiple levels. More recently, his laboratory has developed a strong interest in studying the crosstalk between stromal cells and macrophages across tissues.
For more information, please visit his website.
Marco DeGiovanni
Title of Talk: Decoding immune cell regionalization in mucosal-associated lymphoid tissues
Dr. Marco De Giovanni is a leading immunologist and Group Leader at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy. With a Ph.D. earned under the mentorship of Matteo Iannacone at the same institute and postdoctoral training with HHMI investigator Jason Cyster at UCSF, Marco has established himself as a pioneer in studying immune cell dynamics. His work explores the spatial compartmentalization of immune cells and the critical roles of interferons and G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) in orchestrating their positioning and function. Marco’s academic journey is marked by a string of high-impact publications, where he often serves as the first or corresponding author. His innovative approach to immunological research has garnered prestigious funding, including the ERC Starting Grant, Armenise Harvard Career Development Award, and AIRC Start-Up Grant. Marco’s current research focuses on immune cell regionalization within mucosal tissues and its implications for inflammation, infection, and cancer. His work bridges fundamental science and translational applications, laying the groundwork for tissue-specific therapeutic strategies.
Mauro Gaya
Title of Talk: B Cell Instruction to Mucosal Antigens
EMBO Young Investigator Lecture
Mauro Gaya obtained his BSc degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Buenos Aires (2011, Argentina) and his PhD from the University College London (2015, UK). He performed his PhD work at the London Research Institute in the laboratory of Dr. Facundo Batista. While there, he uncovered a role for lymph node resident macrophages in the induction of B cell responses upon infection (Gaya et al. Science 2015). Mauro Gaya performed a short postdoctoral stage in between the Francis Crick Institute (London, UK) and the Ragon Institute of MIT and Harvard (Cambridge, USA) still with Dr. Batista. His work led to the discovery of how innate T cell populations initiate the seeding of germinal center reactions during infection (Gaya et al. Cell 2018). Mauro Gaya was recruited to the Luminy Center for Immunology (Marseille, France) in 2018, where he studies B cell immunity in barrier tissues (Gregoire et al. Immunity 2022). During this period, Dr Gaya became a Marie Curie fellow, tenured researcher at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and EMBO Young Investigator. At present, his lab is financed by the ERC Starting Grant program to study the role of IgA and IgE in B cell memory.
Menna R. Clatworthy
Title of Talk: Tissue immunity in human organs
Menna Clatworthy is the Professor of Translational Immunology at the University of Cambridge Department of Medicine. She also works clinically as an Honorary Consultant Nephrologist and holds an Associate Faculty position in Cellular Genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. Her research is focused on understanding how tissue-environments shape resident immune cell function, and how tissue immune networks interact across organs. She is also an active participant in the Human Cell Atlas Project, utilizing single cell technologies to better understand the cellular landscape of the human organs.
For more information, please visit her website
Sponsored by
Milka Sarris
Title of Talk: Visualising neutrophil behaviour and fates during inflammatory responses
Milka Sarris did her PhD studies with Dr Alex Betz at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge, UK, where she studied the formation of immunological synapses between immune cells in mouse models. She was awarded her PhD in 2008 and then joined the group of Dr. Philippe Herbomel in Institut Pasteur in Paris for her post-doctoral studies, where she started working with zebrafish on the fundamentals of leukocyte movement mechanisms in vivo. In 2014 she was awarded an MRC Career Development award to set up her independent group in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience in Cambridge (PDN). She was then appointed as Assistant Professor in PDN, as well as Fellow and Lecturer in Trinity College in 2016. Since then, her group has been developing high-end imaging, genetic and optogenetic approaches to dissect leukocyte guidance and signalling dynamics in vivo. She was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2022 and appointed to a Professorship in Cell and Tissue Biology in 2024.
Nadav Yayon
Title of Talk: Spatial knowledge accumulation in the human thymus and beyond
Dr. Nadav Yayon is a senior research scientist at the Tissue Scale Biology Platform of the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, University of Cambridge, following his postdoctoral research with Sarah Teichmann, John Marioni, and Virginie Uhlmann. He specialises in spatial transcriptomics, light microscopy, computational neuroscience, and machine learning. Dr. Yayon recently developed a method to establish a Common Coordinates Framework (CCF) for the human thymus, facilitating the creation of the first spatial atlas of this organ across development. Nadav is now interested in mapping human organ systems across scales, relying on spatial and morphological landmarks for data integration. His work has contributed to numerous international academic collaborations, as well as partnerships with industry to advance spatial technologies.
Nicolas Gaudenzio
Title of Talk: Peripheral neuroimmune interactions in health and disease
Dr Nico Gaudenzio is Research Director at the French national institute of health (Inserm) and Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at the biotech Genoskin (Toulouse FRA, Salem MA USA). Nico received a Master’s in bioengineering and a PhD in Immunology at the University of Toulouse, France and completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Stanford (CA USA). His work has contributed substantially to identifying molecular and cellular targets involved in allergic and non-allergic inflammation. Nico currently leads a large research program to investigate the role of neuroimmune interactions in health and disease. He is three times Laureate of the European Research Council and has received international prizes such as the ACTERIA Early Career Research Prize by the European Federation of Immunological Societies (EFIS) and the Rising Star Award by the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS). He is a member of the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI).
For more information, please visit his LinkedIn and his website
Paul Kubes
Title of Talk: Imaging immunity in sterile injury
Dr Paul Kubes trained at Queen’s University before going to do a postdoc with Dr Neil Granger at Louisiana State University where he fell in love with imaging and first described regulators of leukocyte recruitment in sterile injury. In 2008, he adopted new imaging modalities including spinning disk and two photon microscopy and began imaging liver, lung, skin and various other organs trying to understand the role of various myeloid cells in homeostasis as well as in infections and sterile injury. Presently he is moving from Calgary to Queen’s University where he is building a new imaging center. His interests now are more and more focussed on how macrophages become organ specific and behave within tissues during homeostasis and during various perturbations including cancer. For more information please visit his website
Sponsored by
Ron Germain
Title of Talk: Combining Dynamic and Highly Multiplex 2D and 3D Static Optical Imaging Methods to Probe Immune Function in Tissues
Ronald N. Germain received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1976. Since then he has investigated basic immunobiology, first on the faculty at Harvard, then at NIAID, NIH. He has contributed to understanding MHC class II molecules, antigen processing, and T cell recognition, more recently pioneering analysis of the immune system using dynamic and static in situ microscopy. He has published more than 400 scholarly research papers and reviews and trained more than 80 fellows. Among other honors, he has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, EMBO, AAAS, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Kunkel Society, named a Distinguished Fellow by the American Association of Immunologists, and designated a Distinguished Investigator by NIH.
Sanjiv Luther
Title of Talk: Crosstalk between dendritic cells and fibroblasts shapes T zone compartmentalization and niches
Sanjiv Luther studied cell biology at the ETH in Zürich. He received his PhD in 1996 from the University of Lausanne for his work on anti-viral immune responses in the laboratory of Hans Acha-Orbea which was done in part in the laboratory of Ian MacLennan (Birmingham, UK). Sanjiv then moved to the laboratory of Jason Cyster at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of California, San Francisco where he investigated the role of chemotactic factors in lymphoid tissue development and function. In 2003 he joined the Department of Immunobiology (formerly Biochemistry) as Assistant Professor funded by a career-development award from the Swiss National Science Foundation. In 2009 he became Associate Professor and in 2021 Full Professor. His current research focuses on the characterization of fibroblastic stromal cells found within secondary lymphoid organs, going from development to homeostasis and immunity.
Steffen Jung
Title of Talk: Dissecting tissue macrophages by origins and genetics
Steffen Jung performed his Ph.D. studies in the iInstitute of Genetics, Cologne. He used the then newly introduced gene targeting technology to define cis-acting control elements driving non-coding ’sterile‘ transcripts in immunoglobulin class switch recombination. In 1993, Steffen moved for post-doctoral training to Israel studying transcription factors and kinases in T cell signaling. In 1997, Steffen joined the lab of Dan Littman at the Skirball Institute for Molecular Pathogenesis, NYU Medical Center. There he generated CX3CR1gfp reporter mice and developed, in collaboration with Richard Lang, a novel diphtheria toxin receptor (DTR)-based cell ablation strategy (CD11c-DTR mice). In 2002 Steffen joined the faculty of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel. Current work of the Jung lab focuses on in vivo aspects of mononuclear phagocytes, including the development and differential functions of monocytes and macrophages. The team applies intra-vital imaging, conditional cell, and gene ablation, combined with advanced genomic analyses to investigate the biology of these cells in health and disease. Particular focus is given to monocyte subsets, intestinal and pulmonary macrophages, as well as microglia and CNS-border-associated macrophages. Moreover, the lab got interested in mycobiota and the interplay of fungi among themselves and with the host. For more information, please visit his website
Susan Schwab
Title of Talk: Far from home: T cell migration through non-lymphoid organs
The Schwab lab investigates trafficking of normal and transformed T cells. Much of the lab’s focus has been on how the residence time of normal T cells in tissues is determined. They have established that a gradient of the signaling lipid sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) is required to guide T cells out of lymphoid organs, defined many of the key cells and enzymes that control this gradient, and developed novel tools to map the gradient. Their work has suggested new targets for immune suppressive drugs that modulate S1P signaling, trapping T cells in lymphoid organs and preventing them from accessing sites of inflammation. The lab has also turned their attention to trafficking of transformed T cells. They have found that T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) cells require the chemokine receptor CXCR4 for disease progression, a result that suggests a new strategy for T-ALL therapy. For more information please visit her website
Sponsored by
Tamara Girbl-Huemer
Title of Talk: Imaging the post-endothelial phase of leukocyte transmigration through blood vessel walls in vivo
Tamara Girbl completed her PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Salzburg, Austria, studying leukemic B cell adhesion and migration in microenvironmental niches. As a postdoctoral Fellow of the British Heart Foundation, she joined Prof. Sussan Nourshargh’s group at Queen Mary University of London, UK to study chemotactic cues guiding neutrophil migration across blood vessel walls via intravital microscopy. After a short post-doctoral research stay in Prof. Michael Sixt (Institute of Science and Technology Austria), Tamara joined the Rudolf Virchow Center at the University of Würzburg as a Junior Group Leader in 2020. With her team, she investigates the mechanisms mediating leukocyte breaching of blood vessel walls during inflammatory responses, using intravital microscopy as a key technique. Specifically, her research aims to unravel how pericytes – the mural cells of microvessels- impact leukocyte transmigration and function during innate and adaptive immune responses. For more information please visit her website
Tim Lämmermann
Title of Talk: Surprises from imaging immune cell dynamics in the allergic skin
Tim Lämmermann is a full professor and Director of the Institute for Medical Biochemistry at the Center for the Molecular Biology of Inflammation (ZMBE) at the University Münster since October 2023. He studied Molecular Medicine in Erlangen, then moved to Munich for his PhD thesis at the Max Planck Institute in Martinsried, before he then did his Postdoc at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda (USA). In 2015 he became independent Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany, where he headed the research group “Immune Cell Dynamics”. His lab investigates the basic cell biological mechanisms that shape single cell and population dynamics of immune cells in the complexity of inflamed and infected tissues. By using a broad range of microscopy and imaging techniques, his team explores the strategies that cells of the innate immune response have evolved to move individually or in concert with other cells in order to achieve together an optimal immune response. For more information please visit his website
Sponsored by
Wolfgang Kastenmüller
Title of Talk:Cellular feed-back regulation of CD8 T cell differentiation
Wolfgang Kastenmüller studied Medicine in Munich and did his M.D. in tumor immunology. Following his specialization in medical microbiology and virology, he did his post-doc at the NIH with Ron Germain where he studied T cell dynamics and lymphocyte migration in secondary lymphoid organs. In 2013 he started his independent group in Bonn and elucidated spatiotemporal aspects of CD4 help for CTL and investigated dendritic cells behavior and cooperativity during viral infections. In 2017 he was selected as Max-Planck Research Group Leader and together with Georg Gasteiger founded the Institute for Systems Immunology in Würzburg. In 2019 he received an ERC consolidator award to continue his work on CD8 T cell biology and dendritic cell development and started to investigate the function of unconventional T cells. For more information please visit his website.