https://ccb.sites.vib.be/en/expertise/intravital-imaging

Max Nobis heads the Intravital Imaging Expertise Center at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology in Leuven, Belgium using a wide array of intravital imaging techniques to address a broad range of research questions in the fields of immunology, metabolism, development, cancer metastasis and neurobiology. He has 12 years of experience in intravital imaging techniques and advanced 2-photon microscopy (46 publications, h-index 26). He performed his PhD research the CRUK Beatson Institute, Glasgow, UK establishing the use of FRET biosensor mice to dissect cancer progression and spatiotemporal treatment mapping using optical imaging windows (Nobis et al. 2013 Cancer Research). During his post-doctoral studies at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney Australia, his work has further centered around the use and characterization of novel FLIM-FRET biosensor mice in metabolism, infection, inflammation, cancer and development research (Nobis et al. 2017 Cell Reports, Floerchinger et al. 2021 Cell Reports, Conway et al. 2023 Science Advances). 

Michael Gerlach is an expert intravital imaging scientist having received his Diploma at the TU Dresden and completed his PhD at the Center for Regenerative Therapies in Dresden, where he explored longitudinal imaging of pancreatic islets in the AEC. He went on to do his post-doc at the Department of Nephrology at the university hospital in Dresden and works as of 2018 as an application specialist for intravital imaging at the Core Facility Cellular Imaging located at the Medical Faculty “Carl Gustav Carus” in Dresden.

Michael Kuligowski is a scientist who specializes in Intravital imaging to try and understand dynamic biological processes that occur during pathology of disease. Michael did a Bachelor of Science at The University of Melbourne, before completing his PhD at Monash University investigating leukocyte and platelet recruitment to the glomerular capillary beds within the kidney. He then did a post doc in Boston, at Harvard Medical School where he investigated influenza trafficking in lymph nodes, visualizing the virus enter, bind to, and get passed from macrophages to dendritic cells during the immunization process. Michael then returned to Australia working at The Centenary Institute visualizing immune mediated organ and graft region in skin grafts and islet cells.

A few years ago, Michael joined the microscopy core facility at The University of Sydney, where he manages a microscopy facility, but specializes in assisting researchers set up and then perform intravital imaging experiments.

Asli Ayaz has been a senior scientist at VIB and Neuro-Elecetronics Research Flanders (NERF) since 2019. In Jan 2024, she took on the expert neuroimaging scientist role within the In Vivo Neurophysiology Expertise Unit. She obtained her PhD degree in Neurobiology from the University of California Irvine. Her past research experience extends to both the visual and somatosensory systems and computational approaches. As a postdoctoral researcher at the University College London (UCL) and the University of Zurich, she demonstrated principles of sensorimotor integration in visual cortex neurons (Ayaz et al., 2013, Current Biol, Saleem et al., 2013, Nat Neuro) and across layers of somatosensory cortex (Ayaz et al., 2019, Nat Comm), respectively. Most recently, she was awarded a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (2021) to study large-scale circuit mechanisms of multisensory information selection. She has extensive experience in state-of-the-art in vivo imaging and neural recording techniques, behavioral approaches, and computational skills that are vital for the in-vivo characterization of network dynamics. She aspires to disseminate in-vivo neural circuit manipulation and neural recording approaches to the non-expert scientific community and facilitate deciphering circuit function anomalies in in vivo models of brain disorders.

Intravital Imaging Expertise Center & Laboratory of Intravital Microscopy and Dynamics of Tumor Progression