© 2017-2026 Virginie Uhlmann (website design and its content)

Assistant Professor in Bioimaging and Data Analysis and Director of the BioVisionCenter at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and Visiting Group Leader at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Cambridge, UK

I am an engineer fond of microscopy images who fell in love with computer vision. I hold a MSc in Bioengineering and a PhD in Electrical Engineering, with a focus on approximation and sampling theory for image analysis.

I am leading a bioimaging data analysis research group at the University of Zurich (Zurich, CH), which was originally established at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI, Cambridge, UK) in 2018. My work focuses on the development of aproaches to quantify and model observations in microscopy images. My research interests are a mix of image processing, sampling theory, computational geometry, and machine learning. My group is interdisciplinary: we develop new theoretical frameworks and implement novel algorithms, and we use all of these to understand living systems in collaborative projects with our wet-lab colleagues.

I firmly believe that the best kind of science stems from open and collaborative interdisciplinary communities. As such, I am passionate to nurture community initiatives. This involves advocating for the community's collective interests and contributing to the acquisition and developments of resources that empower every member involved. Since 2024, I am the Director of the BioVisionCenter, a Technology Platform of the University of Zurich which primary objective is to democratize access to advanced bioimage analysis through open source software. We also spearhead the development of Open Science practices for microscopy imaging data through our involvement in the Open Microscopy Environment, where we contribute to the international effort towards open next-generation file formats for microscopy image data.

In the past, I contributed to the creation and development of the Theory Transversal Theme at EMBL, an organization-wide effort to establish a new research programme promoting theory-guided paths to biological discovery. I was co-chairing it until January 2024 and it is still very dear to my heart.

Being a first-generation scientist and a woman, I deeply care about doing my part in ensuring that academia is a welcoming and inclusive environment. Towards this goal, I engage in public events in which I tell about some science that I find exciting or being a human in the scientific world. I am also a mathematics and science ambassador in elementary schools in the Canton of Vaud in Switzerland.

As much as I enjoy science, I need a good chunk of climbing and birds in my life to be my full self.

Please note that this is my personal website and is not related to the institutions I currently work for. As I enjoy the analog life more than the digital one, the content of this website is not always up to date. All the illustrations in this website are personal creations that can be reused under CC-BY license terms.

I am grateful to the Stack Overflow user community for their precious advice and help in designing this webpage.