Patrick Schwarb
Coming from a PhD in Cell Biology and Electron Microscopy, Dr. Patrick Schwarb worked in the imaging industry for fifteen years, for companies like Zeiss, Bitplane and Imagic. He gained valuable imaging and sales experience which he uses in his current position as the head of Image Analysis and Coordinator of the Facility for Advanced Imaging and Microscopy (FAIM), part of the Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI; http://www.fmi.ch/)
, Switzerland. Serving no less than 330 people divided over 22 different research groups, the FAIM is an invaluable instruments and knowledge resource for scientists from various fields including neurobiology, epigenetics and growth control. Dr. Schwarb's knowledge of imaging, his acquaintance with different hard- and software companies and the help of the whole FAIM TEAM, make him perfect for advising scientists on acquisition, optimizing their data collection, analysis and management of their imaging data. As a foundation of Novartis he interacts with the pharmaceutical industry when it comes to specific microscopy applications and data analysis. To share better know-how he is a member of the Swiss Core Facility as well as of the ELMI (European Light Microscopy Initiative). According to Dr. Schwarb, Huygens has a big advantage in being the product of an independent company, unlike software from Zeiss, Nikon or Olympus for example: SVI is always very responsive and open to new areas. He envisions a bigger role for Huygens in the future: "SVI should extend their knowledge in some other areas, like the new 3D Electron microscopy techniques, which now a day are becoming highly accepted in the field of biology. As most of the new microscopy techniques need post-acquisition processing, I could see that SVI and it’s know-how in image processing will play a major role in these new fields."