Lars Hufnagel

Bioimaging embryonic development with light-sheet microscopy

Developmental processes are highly dynamic and span many temporal and spatial scales. A whole-embryo view of morphogenesis with subcellular resolution is essential to unravel the interconnected dynamics at the varying scales of development, from interactions within cells to those acting across the whole embryo. Bridging scales from the submicron to the millimeter range with a temporal resolution of several seconds (combined with a total imaging time of several hours) not only poses tremendous challenges for modern microscopy methods but also requires powerful computational approaches for data handling, processing and image analysis. I will present our recent development in light-sheet microscopy and will highlight applications at the interface of cell and developmental biology.

Lars Hufnagel holds a group leader position in the Cell Biology and Biophysics Unit at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg. He studied physics and mathematics and obtained a PhD in the field of quantum chaos at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation, Göttingen. In his postdoctoral research he investigated the spatial spread of human epidemics and the mechanics description of living tissues at the the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, Santa Barbara, California. His lab at the EMBL focuses on novel imaging techniques for bioimaging. He holds several patents and is the cofounder of two startup companies: Acquifer AG for high content screening microscopy and data analysis, Luxendo GmbH develops light sheet microscopes.