Michal Kozubek - candidate for Technical Councilor

Michal Kozubek received a master's degree in computer science from Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic in 1995. Already his diploma thesis entitled "Analysis of images obtained using fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH)" was dealing with image cytometry and was awarded the Rector Prize. He won a prestigious Soros/FCO Scholarship to spend the subsequent academic year 1995/96 at Oxford University. He joined the group of Prof. Tony Wilson, the leading group in the area of confocal microscopy. He has participated on the pioneering work that finally introduced confocal microscopy using structured light illumination published in Nature in 1996.

After obtaining know-how in confocal microscopy Michal returned to Brno and since 1997 has tried to apply the gained experience to build automated wide-field as well as confocal microscopy systems for 3D image cytometry purposes, especially automated FISH imaging. At that time 2D low-resolution image cytometry system just became available (laser scanning cytometry, LSCM, developed by L. Kamentsky and sold by CompuCyte Corporation) as an alternative to flow cytometry. Michal concentrated, however, on building 3D high-resolution image cytometry systems (he introduced the term high-resolution cytometry, HRCM, in his papers published in Cytometry journal in 1999 and 2001). His Ph.D. thesis entitled "High-resolution cytometry: hardware approaches, image analysis techniques and applications" was defended in 1998 and was awarded the Rector Prize as well as distinguished Minister of Education Prize.

Right after finishing his Ph.D. studies Michal was offered an opportunity to set up his own group as well as imaging facility in Brno. He agreed and since 1998 he is head of the Centre for Biomedical Image Analysis as well as Laboratory of Optical Microscopy at Masaryk University. The focus of the group is on 3D high-resolution image cytometry including live cell imaging. The group employs people of different backgrounds and handles the whole process of obtaining cell material in hospitals, its treatment, fluorescence staining, acquisition using HRCM instruments and analysis of acquired data.

Since 2000 Michal has also been active in teaching digital image processing and image acquisition courses for both undergraduate and postgraduate students. In 2006 he introduced a unique study field called "Image Processing". In 2002 he was appointed Associate Professor of Computer Science.

Michal is a member of ISAC since 2000 when he presented HRCM technique in Montpellier at ISAC XX congress. He is a member of Program Committee for ISAC XXIV congress in Budapest.

For more information and list of publications see Michal’s web page here.

Campaign Statement

I accepted the committee's nomination for Technical Councilor because I believe I could make use of my interdisciplinary (but mainly technical) background to promote discussions between cytometry instrument developers and their users joined in ISAC and try to find best technical solutions and standards to fulfill the growing demands of cell research community.

I feel ISAC is very strong in flow cytometry but somewhat weaker in image cytometry. Therefore, I would like to strengthen the position of ISAC in image cytometry so that our society will be the leading technical organization for both methodologies.

Based on my teaching experience (especially signal/image acquisition and signal/image processing courses) I could also help improving available educational materials, especially for image cytometry. Whereas, for example, in image processing field there are many handbooks available, the situation in the field of image acquisition using optical microscopy is much worse, especially if one tries to find materials related to camera-based image detection.

Also I would like to attract more attention of potential society members from Central and Eastern Europe whose participation in ISAC still lags behind Western Europe, not speaking of the United States.