João Miguel Sanches
IEEE senior member, Institute for Systems and Robotics, Professor from the Bioengineering Department (DBE) / Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal

Lecture Title: Biological Quantification from Imaging

J. Miguel Sanches (JS) received the E.E., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the Lisbon Institute of Technology (Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) ), Technical University of Lisbon (UTL), Portugal, in 1991, 1996 and 2003 respectively and the habilitation (agregação) in 2013 by the University of Lisbon (UL) in Biomedical Engineering. JS teaches at the Department of Bioengineering (DBE) at the IST and before he was at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (DEEC) where has taught in the area of signal processing, systems and control. JS has been actively involved in the course of Biomedical Engineering advising master and PhD thesis on the area of Bioengineering, specially, on Biomedical engineering.
JS is researcher at the Institute for Systems and Robotics (ISR) and his work has been focused in Biomedical Engineering (BME), namely, in biological and medical image processing and statistical signal processing of physiological and behavioural data. Morphological and textural characterization of tissues from Ultrasound (US) images for the diagnosis of the atherosclerotic disease of the carotid and diffuse diseases of the liver are central issues but he is also working with fluorescence images of microscopy for biological quantification purposes. JS is also involved in the development of signal processing algorithms for polysonmnography data and smartphones applications for long term monitoring for sleep disorders diagnosis purposes. In this scope, Heart Rate Variability analysis is today one of his main interests.
Almost all of his research work is in collaboration with medical and biological institutions, namely, Medical School of the University of Lisbon (FMUL), the Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM) in Lisbon, the Institute of Molecular Pathology and Immunology of the University of Porto (IPATIMUP) and the Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology Center (Centro de Electroencefalografia Neurofisiologia Clínica - CENC). Several publications and patents were already produced in the scope of this collaborative work.
JS is senior member of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society since 2011 and Member of the Bio Imaging and Signal Processing Technical Committee (BISP-TC) of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. He is also president of the Portuguese Association of Pattern Recognition (APRP), an affiliated of the International Association of Pattern Recognition (IAPR).

Gaby G. Martins
Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Oeiras, Portugal

Lecture Title: Optical tomography in Developmental Biology - an Open-source approach

Born in Bragança (Portugal) in 1971 I grew up in Cascais where I still live with my mate + clutch of the 4 most beautiful embryos ever produced (Dé, Dany, JP & Bá)! Growing up, summers were often spent in the countryside in Bragança in contact with nature...naturally I became a Biologist! Graduated in Biology in 1994 from the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, I followed a post-graduation in Developmental Biology from Lusofona University, studying gastrulation in sea urchins. In 2004 I finished my PhD in Anatomy and Cell Biology from the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences of the State University of New York, at Buffalo NY - USA studying cell migration in 3D. As an undergrad I also lectured in high-schools, and during my PhD worked part-time as assistant of Confocal Microscopy Lab of SMBS/SUNY-Buffalo. In 2004 I returned to Portugal to teach Developmental Biology at the Instituto Piaget - Almada. In 2006 I started a post-doc at FCUL, and collaborated as an imaging specialist at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia in Oeiras. In 2008 I became a researcher at the Centre for Environmental Biology (CBA/FCUL), during which I served also as a member of the Executive Committe (2009-2010), and as a manager of the FCUL's Microscopy Facility. I have authored several articles and book chapters on developmental and cell biology and Bioimaging, and currently run a Master’s level course on Bioimaging at FCUL, participate and organize several national and international advanced courses on microscopy. My personal interests include music, photography, home-improvement, mechanics and spending time with our brood!

Massimo Marenzana
Faculty of Engineering, Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College, London, UK

Lecture Title: High-throughput 3D imaging of cartilage and bone in experimental murine models of osteoarthritis

Dr Marenzana's research is concerned with the basic biological mechanisms by which connective and skeletal tissue cells respond to the mechanical environment by remodelling the structure and composition of their extracellular matrix and how these built-in, evolutionary mechanisms are affected by pathological conditions.
Over the years his approach has been to combined quantitative imaging techniques with bespoke mechanotronic devices to accurately characterize the mechanical environment in which the mechanisms of cell-driven tissue remodelling were investigated. Using similar approaches, his group is now carrying out studies on the mechanobiology of the articular joints in mouse models of osteoarthritis. Their goal is to characterise the mechanical factors and the structural changes in articular cartilage and subchondral bone in mouse models of mechanically-induced osteoarthritis as the basis to pin down the relationship between mechanical stresses and the molecular signalling leading to joint pathology.

MORE INFO: http://marenzana.openwetware.org

Twan Lammers
Department of Experimental Molecular Imaging at the University Clinic and the Helmholtz Center for Biomedical Engineering at RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Lecture Title: Non-invasive imaging in drug delivery and tissue engineering

Twan Lammers obtained a DSc degree in Radiation Oncology from Heidelberg University in 2008 and a PhD degree in Pharmaceutics from Utrecht University in 2009. In the same year, he started the Nanomedicine and Theranostics group at the Department of Experimental Molecular Imaging at RWTH Aachen University, which currently consists of ~15 graduate students and post-docs. Since 2012, he has also been appointed as a part-time assistant professor (10%) at the Department of Controlled Drug Delivery at the University of Twente. His primary research interests include drug targeting to tumors, image-guided drug delivery, image-guided tissue engineering, and functional and molecular imaging of angiogenesis and inflammation. He has authored ~90 research articles and reviews (>550 cumulative impact; >2200 citations), and has received several prizes and awards (including an ERC Starting Grant).

Marta Candeias
National Contact Point for Key Enabling Technologies – Nanotechnologies, Advanced Materials and Advanced Manufacturing and Processing, and for SMEs, specifically SME instrument and Fast Track to Innovation.

Lecture Title: Funding Perspectives on Applied Biomaging in H2020

Marta Candeias has a degree in Biologic Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and Master in the same area, specialized in advanced materials. She is National Contact Point (NCP) for European Union programs - 7th Framework Program of Research & Technological Development and Horizon 2020 – since 2009 in nanotechnologies, advanced materials and advanced manufacturing thematic areas and also for support to SMEs. Between 2007 and 2009 she has done research in IST in product development and participated in some national and European research projects. Since 2009 she has been also participating in integration and capacitation of efforts for NCPs projects in the thematic areas mentioned above (SMEsGoHealth, TrasnCoSME, NMP TeAm and NMP TeAm 2).

Max Viergever
Professor and Head of the Department of Medical Imaging at Utrecht University, Thr Netherlands

Lecture Title: Grand challenges in biomedical image analysis

Max A. Viergever received the MSc degree in applied mathematics in 1972 and the DSc degree with a thesis on cochlear mechanics in 1980, both from Delft University of Technology. From 1972 to 1988 he was Assistant/Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics at this university.
Since 1988 he has been Professor and Head of the Department of Medical Imaging at Utrecht University, since 1989 Professor of Physics and since 1996 Professor of Computer Science at the same university, and since 2002 Manager Education and Research of the Imaging Division of the University Medical Center Utrecht. He is founder and director of the Image Sciences Institute, of the PhD programme Medical Imaging (ImagO), and of the MSc programme Biomedical Image Sciences (BIS).
He is (co)author of more than 550 refereed scientific articles (abstracts excluded) on biophysics and medical image processing, guest editor of nine journal issues, (co)author/editor of 18 books, and has served as supervisor of 116 PhD theses and >140 MSc theses. His research interests comprise all aspects of medical imaging.
Max Viergever is an Honorary Senator of the University of Ljubljana, an Honorary Member of the Dutch Society for Pattern Recognition and Image Processing, and a recipient of the Catharijne Award and of the IEEE EMBS Distinguished Service Award. He is an Elected Fellow of the Institute of Physics (IOP), of the International Association of Pattern Recognition (IAPR), of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and of the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) Society.
He is (co)author of three awarded journal articles (Comput. & Graphics 1996, J. Comput. Assist. Tomogr. 1997, Diabetes 2007) and of >10 best conference presentations, and has received three citation awards (IEEE Trans. Med. Imaging 1988, 1995; Med. Image Anal. 1998). He has been a board member of IAPR, IPMI and MICCAI, editor of the Springer book series Computational Imaging and Vision, editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, editor of the Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision, and has acted as associate editor, guest editor or editorial board member of thirteen more international journals.

http://www.isi.uu.nl/People/?max

Bram Herpers
Chief Operations Officer at OcellO B.V., Leiden, The Netherlands

Lecture Title: Advanced high-content analysis of 3D cell cultures for compound screening and profiling

Bram Herpers joined OcellO in 2013 following an extended post-doc in Toxicology at the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research. Trained as a Biologist, he completed his PhD at Utrecht University (2006) and focused on microscopy and molecular and cell biology. Assay and technique development have always been his major interests. As such, he developed multiple imaging and analysis techniques for high throughput screening of drugs, compounds and siRNAs at the LACDR. He continues to develop 3D assays that combine microtissue culturing techniques and image analysis pipelines as a COO together with the research team of OcellO, a CRO that specializes in 3D cell based assays for compound screening and profiling as a service for academia, biotech and pharmaceutical industries.

http://www.ocello.nl

Ophélie Lancry
HORIBA Scientific - Raman Application Scientist, HORIBA Jobin Yvon, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France

Lecture Title: Raman spectroscopy for Biomedical applications

- PhD in 2009 – LASIR laboratory – Université de Lille in France : Micro-Raman characterization of materials
and microelectronic devices containing wide band gap III-V semiconductors
- Postdoc 2009-2011 – IEMN laboratory – Université de Lille in France : Micro-Raman characterization of grapheme
In 2011 she became a Raman Application Scientist at Horiba Scientific. Since 2013 she is in charge of AFM-Raman and TERS measurements at Horiba Scientific.