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Skills: Strategic planning of image analysis for biological projects, implementation of bioimage analysis workflows based on biological insights, setting up customized ImageJ plugins and scripts. Coding languages: Java, Python, ImageJ Macro, C, R.

Background: Kota started imaging in life science using time-lapse VHS video recording of plant tissue during his undergraduate, and then during his PhD study in Osaka, Japan, and in Munich, Germany, he studied single cell migration mechanism of Physarum (True slime mold) and phototaxis of the multicellular migration of Dictyostelium (Cellular slime mold) using custom optical setups and self-made image analysis algorithms.

During his postdoc at EMBL Heidelberg from 2001, his image analysis skills attracted many collaboration projects besides his main study for intracellular vesicle trafficking, and eventually was promoted in 2005 as the first image analysis expert in EMBL responsible for a new section “the centre for molecular and cellular imaging (CMCI)”.

During his time at CMCI, he consulted and collaborated with various biological projects ranging from molecular, cellular, and developmental biology. He also designed internal courses for bioimage analysis, which became the seed of the EMBL Master course for Bioimage Data Analysis starting in 2013, which then expanded to initiate the Network of European Bioimage Analysts (NEUBIAS) together with other bioimage analysts in Europe.

In 2014, he became an associate professor of the National Institutes of Basic Sciences in Japan, cross-appointed with EMBL to promote collaboration of imaging-based studies between European researchers and Japanese researchers. In 2016, he became a self-employed freelance bioimage analyst. Through the networking activities, he has edited and authored three bioimage analysis textbooks and published another three bioimage analysis textbooks in Japanese. Since 2023, together with the colleagues of NEUBIAS, he has been working on expanding the network beyond Europe and established GloBIAS (Global Bioimage Analysts’ Society) in 2024.

A recent interview has more details on his background.

Contact kotapub@gmail.com