SFBS 2026: Meet our new speakers
Four new invited speakers have been announced for SFBS 2026, further enriching the scientific programme dedicated to super-resolution microscopy for biological imaging.
Here’s few places left, you can still register for the event!
Laurent Cognet
Laurent Cognet is a Research Director at the CNRS and Group Leader at the LP2N (Laboratory of Photonics, Numerical and Nanosciences), part of the Institute of Optics at the University of Bordeaux, France, where he also serves as Director of the research center. He earned his PhD in 1999 in quantum physics from Université Paris-Saclay under the supervision of Alain Aspect.
He then transitioned to nano- and biophotonics as a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at Leiden University (Netherlands) in the group of Thomas Schmidt. In 2006–2007, he was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Rice University.
Over the past 25+ years, Laurent Cognet has contributed to advances in single-molecule localization microscopy and carbon nanotube spectroscopy, applying these techniques to key questions in nanosciences and neuroscience. His current work focuses on developing innovative microscopy methods to study molecular diffusion in complex biological environments.
He has authored over 125 peer-reviewed publications and received multiple awards for his contributions.
Pingyong Xu
Dr. Pingyong Xu, a tenured professor at the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and faculty member at the College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, earned his Ph.D. from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2004.
His research focuses on integrating spectroscopy, biophysical microscopy techniques, and protein design to develop innovative optical imaging tools, particularly photo-controllable fluorescent proteins (FPs).
Notably, Dr. Xu pioneered the development of the groundbreaking FP mEosEM for correlative light and transmission electron microscopy. He has also designed a range of high-performance FPs tailored for super-resolution imaging technologies such as PALM/STORM, SOFI, RESOLFT, and NL-SIM, significantly enhancing their temporal and spatial resolutions. Among these, mEos3.2 and Skylan-S stand out as premier FPs for PALM and SOFI imaging, respectively.
His most recent achievement is the development of mScarlet3-S2 for 3D STED microscope, and 3Snet CLID, a groundbreaking method capable of reconstructing SR images using just 1 frame of wide-field/spinning disk confocal raw images.
Anna Brachet
Anna Brachet is a CNRS researcher at the Interdisciplinary Institute for Neuroscience in Bordeaux, France. She was trained as a cell biologist in Marseille, where she studied the organization and dynamics of sodium channels at the axon initial segment.
During her postdoctoral work in Madrid, Spain, she investigated molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity, including AMPA receptor trafficking.
Her current work focuses on the neuronal membrane periodic skeleton and its role in maintaining cellular architecture while supporting plasticity. Combining advanced fluorescence microscopy, molecular perturbations, and functional assays, her research aims to understand how membrane-associated cytoskeletal structures organize and regulate the function of neurons and astrocytes.
Yongdeng Zhang
Dr. Yongdeng Zhang received his B.E. in Biomedical Engineering from Central South University in 2008 and his Ph.D. in Biophysics from Huazhong University of Science & Technology in 2013, through a joint program with the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
He then pursued postdoctoral research at Yale University School of Medicine from 2014 to 2020. In October 2020, he joined the School of Life Sciences at Westlake University as a Principal Investigator.
Dr. Zhang’s laboratory operates at the interface of technology and biology, advancing subcellular imaging through two complementary innovations. To map protein complexes with molecular precision, they developed 4Pi single-molecule localization microscopy (4Pi-SIMFLUX and me4Pi-SMLM), achieving isotropic 3D localization precision of 2–3 nm to resolve ultrastructural features below 10 nm in whole cells. To capture rapid subcellular events and inter-organelle interactions, they developed 4Pi structured illumination microscopy (4Pi-SIM) for two-color, time-lapse volumetric imaging, delivering ~100 nm isotropic 3D resolution at 1 Hz in living cells.
Together, these technologies constitute a scalable toolbox that bridges static molecular architecture and live cellular dynamics, enabling quantitative studies that were previously inaccessible to fluorescence microscopy.
Don’t miss this opportunity to meet these experts during SFBS 2026! Join us in Bordeaux from October 19 to 21, 2026!
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