SU Imaging Day 2026: Seeing more by combining methods

The day was jointly organised by the university's imaging facilities – SUBIC, the Electron Microscopy Center (EMC), MACAL, the Imaging Facility at Stockholm University (IFSU) and IVMSU. It opened with Professor Henrik Cederquist, Vice-Chancellor for Research Infrastructures, who described how Stockholm University is strengthening its support for research infrastructure. Since November 2025, the Council for Research Infrastructure (Rådet för forskningens infrastruktur, RFF) has prepared proposals on which the Vice-Chancellor has approved new rules for financing and co-financing of research infrastructure at the university.

From acquisition to analysis The morning session on multimodal and correlative imaging started with invited speaker Julia Fernandez-Rodriguez, Head of the Centre for Cellular Imaging at the University of Gothenburg. In her talk, "Correlative multimodal imaging across scales: from acquisition to advanced image analysis", she showed how combining imaging techniques can reveal more than any single method on its own. She also talked about what a university needs to support such work, for example data infrastructure and coordination between facilities.

Tom Willhammar, Department of Chemistry, then gave an overview of the imaging facilities at Stockholm University. After that, researchers from across the faculty showed how they use imaging in their own work. Mahmoud Mazarji and Rongying Liu from the Department of Chemistry presented imaging of nanoplastics and nanoscale amine chemistry in CO₂-capture materials. Kristina Jonas from the Department of Molecular Biosciences, The Wenner-Gren Institute, presented imaging of bacterial growth transitions and stress responses.

Professor Emily Baird from the Department of Zoology described how she uses multimodal imaging to understand insect sensing and cognition. One example was micro-CT scanning at SUBIC, which her group used to analyse the visual field of the monarch butterfly as part of a study of the insect compass.

Image analysis and AI The afternoon session was about image analysis, including machine learning and AI. Invited speaker Anna Klemm, Head of the BioImage Informatics Facility (BIIF) at SciLifeLab/NBIS, presented the national support that is available to researchers in Sweden who need help with bioimage analysis. Her examples included registering spatial transcriptomics data with immunofluorescence images, so that gene expression can be linked directly to tissue structure.

Hong Jiang from the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology (MTC) at Karolinska Institutet and SciLifeLab gave the talk "When seeing is (not) believing". She discussed the opportunities and pitfalls of AI-based image interpretation, including vision-language models applied to pathology images.

The session also included talks by Thomas Thersleff (3D-EM facility, Karolinska Institutet) on reducing the electron dose in electron microscopy, Aji P. Mathew (Department of Chemistry) on atomic force microscopy of biobased nanomaterials, and Hanzhao Zhang (KTH/SciLifeLab) on REEF, an AI-powered microscopy imaging farm. Jens Jasche, AI coordinator for the Faculty of Science, presented the new AI Centre at Stockholm University.

Each session ended with an open discussion about the potential of multimodal imaging and AI at the university. During breaks and lunch, participants could look at the posters and meet facility staff, and in the afternoon they toured SUBIC, EMC/MACAL and IFSU.

The organisers thank all speakers, poster presenters, facility staff and participants for making the day a success, and look forward to seeing everyone again at SU Imaging Day 2027.

Learn more:

Programme for SU Imaging Day 2026
Infrastructures at Kemikum, Stockholm University

IFSU

IVMSU