Looking Back: Our 2024 Events & What’s Ahead in 2025
Past events
As we close out 2024, we reflect on the many events organized by and for our GerBI Community throughout the year:
26.–29.02. – GerBI FLIM Workshop: Hosted by the Core Facility Bioimaging at the Biomedical Center of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Planegg-Martinsried and organized by our Team FLIM, this workshop targeted PhD students and postdocs from the life sciences interested in using Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging (FLIM). Participants learned about FLIM through a combination of lectures and hands-on sessions.
4.–6.03. – GerBI Annual Meeting: This year’s community meeting was held at the Kloster Frauenberg in Fulda, bringing together over 50 members of our community. Our members exchanged ideas among teams, explored research data management within GerBI, and we held our General Assembly, including elections for the GerBI Board and Advisory Board. The slides for the RDM talk are uploaded here on our Zenodo and we have a brief report about our meeting available on our website.
17.04. – Ask the Experts Talk FCS: The year’s first AtE talk in our collaborative event series by GerBI & the Max Planck BioImaging Core Unit Network (MaxBI) focused on “Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy”, with insights shared by experts
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- Christian Eggeling (Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena),
- Jan-Hagen Krohn (MPI of Biochemistry, Martinsried),
- Gabriele Malengo (MPI for Terrestrial Microbiology, Marburg),
- Peter Hemmerich (Leibniz Institute on Ageing, Jena).
15.05. – Online Seminar by Team Intravital Microscopy: This seminar, titled "Contact-free Monitoring of Vital Signs for In Vivo Imaging", featured invited guest Marc Zuend from Vigilitech AG, who presented a technical solution for monitoring rodent vital signs during intravital microscopy.
11.09. – GerBI Chat: "Vom Bedarf bis zum Großgeräteantrag-Schreiben": This online chat, organized by Team Finance, provided guidance for core facilities on planning, budgeting, and preparing applications for large equipment. The Team has also prepared and uploaded the slides of the Chat here on our GerBI Zenodo.
24.–27.09. – Core Facility Leadership and Management Course: Our annual CFLM course for Core Facility managers in the life sciences took place once again at Schloss Mickeln in Düsseldorf. Covering a broad set of management skills, the course was highly praised by the participants. Dates for next year’s course are already set: 11.-16.08.2025, updates will be published on our CFLM course event page.
25.09. – GerBI Chat: "Wie schreibe ich am besten einen Großgeräteantrag": Another online chat organized by Team Finance and Legal Framework of Core Facilities, this session focused on tips and tricks for preparing large equipment grant proposals, crafting strong equipment concepts, and addressing related questions from a Core Facility perspective. All the slides of the chat are made available by the Team here on our Zenodo.
28.10 – YMIA Networking Event: Our Team Young Microscopists and Image Analysts organized an event at the Johannstadt Campus of TU Dresden, bringing together campus experts and young scientists. The topics included the role of microscopy in education, the latest advancements in image analysis, and ideas for expanding YMIA’s impact (and pizza).
13.11. – YMIA Mini-Series Seminar: The first session of this two-part series, organized by Team Young Microscopists and Image Analysts, was titled "Getting Started with OMERO". Guest speaker Tom Boissonet covered data management and subsequent image analysis using OMERO.
13.–14.11. – 4th Day of Intravital Microscopy: Organized by Team Intravital Microscopy and the Intravital Imaging Expertise Center of the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology, the fourth annual Day of IvMic was held in Leuven, Belgium, and brought together approximately 90 attendees. They shared the latest research and advances in intravital microscopy. With the growing interest, the dates for next year’s event in Tübingen have already been confirmed and it will take place from the 18.-19.09.2025. For more information, have a look on the event page.
18.–22.11. – OME-NGFF Workflows Hackathon 2024: Hosted at the BioVision Center, University of Zurich, this hackathon focused on FAIR image data and analysis workflows, OME-NGFF, and the Zarr V3 standard. The event was made possible with funding from NFDI4BIOIMAGE and co-organized by GerBI and the BioVision Center.
19.–21.11. – Workshop on Administrative Challenges in Core Facilities & Technology Platforms: This year again, Team Finance organized this annual workshop in Ulm, focusing on the administrative and operational challenges faced by core facilities and technology platforms.
21.11. – Second YMIA Mini-Series Seminar: The two-part series concluded with a hands-on workshop on "How to Use OMERO for Image Processing with Jupyter Notebooks".
27.11. – Ask the Experts Talk Tissue clearing: The year closed with a successful second Ask the Experts talk on "Tissue Clearing" organised together with MaxBI, featuring discussions with experts
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- Bettina Weigelin (Werner Siemens Imaging Center, Department of Preclinical Imaging and Radiopharmacy, University Hospital Tübingen),
- Katie Shirley (Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience),
- Nils Kirschnick (BioOpticService, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine), and
- Ruth Hans (Center for Molecular and Cellular Bioengineering, Biotechnology Center, TU Dresden).
The strong engagement from the GerBI and MaxBI Community during the Q&A sessions has reinforced our decision to continue the AtE series next year.
16.12. – 17.12. – GerBI Board Meeting in Heidelberg: For 1.5 days, the GerBI board met in Heidelberg to discuss about the future aims of the society. Key topics included defining the core purpose of GerBI, envisioning its growth over the next five years, and exploring opportunities for third-party funding and potential new projects. These discussions laid the groundwork for an exciting and strategic year ahead, ensuring that GerBI continues to evolve and is well-positioned for the coming years.
We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to all the teams and individuals who organized and contributed to these events, as well as to the experts who generously shared their knowledge and insights during the various sessions. Your dedication and effort make these events possible and successful.
As we look ahead to 2025, we are excited about the upcoming events and opportunities to connect, share, and learn as a community. Some events have already been scheduled, find the information below!
Planned events
In 2025, GerBI plans the following events for the community:
TiM2025: From 17.-21.3., we will meet at lovely Albgut for our next edition of TiM. We are overwhelmed by the interest in TiM2025 registrations! Already in November, TiM2025 was booked out and we allocated an additional 20 spots on an application basis, to give more participants the chance on joining. After opening workshop submissions earlier this spring, we received the highest number of workshop proposals ever. We would like to sincerely thank you all for this incredible response. In addition to the increase in the number of workshops, there will also be an expansion of the physical space for TiM, with an additional building including the BT4.
The confirmed speakers for TiM2025 will be:
- Siân Culley, Randall Centre for Cell & Molecular Biophysics, King’s College London
- Matthew Hartley, BioImage Archive EMBL-EBI, Hinxton
- Anna Kreshuk, EMBL Heidelberg
- Ali Ertürk, Ludwig-Maximilians University & Helmholtz Center Munich
- Serge Monneret, Fresnel Institute, CNRS, Aix-Marseille University
- Mayeul Collot, Laboratoire de Chémo-Biologie Synthétique et Thérapeutique, University of Strasbourg
We're particularly pleased to have speakers from the French community, with Serge and Mayeul joining us, and to welcome France as our partner country with a French delegation attending TiM2025. We are looking forward to TiM2025 and to seeing many of you there!
General Assembly (online): on April 2nd, from 13:30-~17:30, our general assembly will take place. Together with the board, we’ll give you an update on everything which happened in the society during 2024 and we’ll discuss the future budget and meetings.
GerBI Chat on GloBIAS: Together with GloBIAS, we would like to give you and update about the current state of the GloBIAS project and receive your feedback on the project. The Chat is planned for February and will soon be announced.
GerBI Chat on OME-Zarr: Learn about the benefits of the OME-Zarr file format and how to use it in your everyday (research) life. We are planning it for April , watch out for the announcement!
OME2025: GerBI is active in helping to organize the OME2025 meeting at MBL Woods Hole, MA, USA from 28.4.-1.5..
Ask the Experts on LLMs: An opportunity to exchange and learn about the use of Large Language Models in research. The date and time will be communicated as soon as it is planned on our AtE webpage.
GerBI Core Facility Leadership & Management Course: From 11.-16.8., participants will learn from hfp consulting how to enhance their leadership and management skills in core facilities. For updates, check out our event page.
Day of Intravital Microscopy: The 5th Day of Intravital Microscopy will be organized by the GerBI team Intravital Microscopy in collaboration with the Multiscale Immunoimaging Team from the Werner Siemens Imaging Center with support from the GerBI office. It will take place on 18.-19.9., in Tübingen, Germany.
