Session III:
May 21, 2026, 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM ET
BioEM of Clinical Samples
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Yongxin (Leon) Zhao
Dr. Yongxin (Leon) Zhao is the Eberly Family Career Development Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, where he leads the Zhao Biophotonics Lab. Trained as a chemist at the University of Alberta and MIT — where he worked with Ed Boyden during the early development of expansion microscopy — his research centers on creating tools for nanoscale imaging of biological specimens and clinical tissues. His lab developed Magnify, a universal expansion microscopy method published as the cover paper in Nature Biotechnology (2023), which preserves and expands a broad range of biomolecules including proteins, lipids, glycans, and nucleic acids. His work spans cancer pathology, neuroscience, and infectious disease imaging. He is also the co-founder of Magnify Biosciences, translating these technologies into clinical and research workflows. He holds an NIH Director's New Innovator Award and has an H-index of 27 with over 7,600 citations.
Andrea Marshall
Correlative Light and Electron Microscopy: Linking Cellular Dynamics to Ultrastructural Architecture
Dr. Andrea G. Marshall is a Research Assistant Professor at Meharry Medical College and a Staff Scientist and senior investigator within the Vanderbilt University Hinton Laboratory. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry with an American Chemical Society certified Biochemistry emphasis from The University of Southern Mississippi and earned her Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She subsequently completed postdoctoral training in Physiology and Neurobiology at the University of California Davis and in Physiology of Aging at the University of Iowa.
Dr. Marshall’s research focuses on mitochondrial biology, organelle communication, skeletal muscle physiology, neurobiology, aging, and metabolic disease. She integrates advanced imaging approaches including Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Serial Block Face Scanning Electron Microscopy (SBF SEM), Focused Ion Beam Scanning Electron Microscopy (FIB SEM), confocal microscopy, and three dimensional organelle reconstruction with biochemical, metabolomic, electrophysiologic, and multi omics analyses to investigate mitochondrial architecture and organelle communication across disease states.
Her work has identified how mitochondrial remodeling, cristae disorganization, MERC dysfunction, oxidative stress, and altered mitochondrial quality control contribute to skeletal muscle dysfunction, metabolic disease, neurodegeneration, and aging related tissue decline. Her scholarship has received more than 2,789 citations with an h index of 31 and an i10 index of 54. She recently received the 2026 Treva T. Brown Microscopy Impact and Leadership Award and the 2026 Ernest Everett Just Legacy Award for Exceptional Microscopy from the Microscopy Society of America.
Baktiar Karim
The Role of Pathology in Cancer Research
Dr. Baktiar Karim is a cancer researcher whose work centers on the molecular mechanisms of disease, animal disease models and preclinical research. He received his doctorate in veterinary medicine from the University of Baghdad and continued his training with a combined pathology residency/PhD in the Department of Comparative Medicine at Johns Hopkins where he focused on focusing on the role of the Apc/Wnt signaling regenerative pathway. His training integrates core biological sciences, veterinary medicine, histopathology, and toxicology which provide a strong foundation for investigation of cancer development and progression, as well as therapeutic interventions.
Currently, Dr. Karim serves as Director at the Molecular Histopathology Laboratory at the Frederick National Lab for Cancer Research. His lab provides comprehensive pathology support to investigators at the National Cancer Institute and other NIH agencies, as well as to extramural collaborators. His responsibilities include grading and staging cancer in mouse models, conducting animal health diagnostics, performing digital image analysis to quantify biomarkers, and developing AI-assisted algorithms to distinguish invasive cancer from pre-neoplastic lesions.
His expertise lies in in-depth investigation of tissue regeneration, tumor initiation, and tumor inhibition and he has experience with many different cancer models including pancreatic, kidney, lung, skin, ovarian, mesothelioma, melanoma and mammary cancer. His work directly supports translational cancer research and preclinical model validation. His team provides expertise and services in mouse histology and cutting edge molecular pathology including multiplexed RNAScope and immunohistochemistry and spatial transcriptomics.
Daniel Crooks
Dr. Crooks’ research is focused on the characterization of altered tumor and mitochondrial metabolism in hereditary cancers, including those caused by mutations in the Krebs cycle enzymes fumarate hydratase (HLRCC) and succinate dehydrogenase (SDH-RCC), as well as renal tumors associated with Birt-Hogg-Dubé and von Hippel-Lindau syndromes. The approach is to utilize stable isotope-resolved metabolomics, genomics, transcriptomic, proteomic and molecular techniques to identify targetable metabolic alterations in human tumors and tumor cells, to offer new therapeutic possibilities for these unique patient populations. Dr. Crooks is also the Acting Director of the CCR Clinical Cancer Metabolism Facility located in NIH Building 10 for the conduct of collaborative intramural metabolomics studies and metabolic imaging, with a focus on targeted analysis of human tissue samples, isotope-resolved metabolomics studies of patient-derived tissues and cells, and utilization of pre-clinical and human metabolic imaging technologies.