Prof.dr.ir. Bram Koster

Prof.dr.ir. Koster (1960) is working in the Section Electron Microscopy in the Department Cell and Chemical Biology at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) since 2006. In 2008, he was appointed full professor on Ultra-structural and Molecular Imaging at the Faculty of Medicine and since 2015 Professor Nanobioimaging at the Faculty of Science, both at Leiden University.

In 1989 he obtained his PhD Physics degree at the Delft University of Technology on the mathematical modelling and automation of transmission electron microscopes. Between 1989 and 1991 he worked as a Project Manager and Software Developer at Tietz Video and Imaging Processing (TVIPS, GmbH) in Gauting, near Munich, Germany. From 1991 to 1993 he was a post-doctoral fellow in the group of David Agard, at UCSF, San Francisco, working on the automation of electron tomography. From 1993 to 1997 he worked in the group of Wolfgang Baumeister at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, near Munich, Germany, developing and pioneering low-dose cryo tomography methods. In 1997, he returned to the Netherlands to the group of Arie Verkleij at Utrecht University, where he became Associate Professor and set up his research group aimed at method development for the 3D imaging electron microscopy specimen. From 1998 to 2003 he was a Fellow of the Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW).

In  2006 he went to the Leiden University Medical Center to head the section Electron Microscopy and was appointed full professor in 2008. In 2015 he became also Professor Nanobioimaging at the Faculty of Science (Leiden University). Between 2015 and 2018 he was Scientific Director of the Netherlands Center of Electron Nanoscopy (NeCEN), also located in Leiden.

Bram Koster enjoys working on the development, automation and of advanced electron microscopy methods. He has worked on and with a large variety of imaging techniques, and has collaborated on applications with many different research groups and on as many different topics, in both the biological and materials science. He enjoys working on fundamental scientific aspects of the technology, to establish innovative applications in different scientific fields. He likes to work on the interface between academia and industry, and has been part of a large number of international research consortia and project.

More recently, he became interested in the applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the field of electron microscopy to improve the various steps in its workflow, from data collection, automation, data processing and interpretation.

For general research interests please check out the Electron Microscopy webpage

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