Athul Vijayan: Plant Physiology First Author

Athul Vijayan, co-first author of  “The annotation and analysis of complex 3D plant organs using 3DCoordX”

Current Position: Postdoc in the group of Prof. Miltos Tsiantis, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Cologne, Germany.

Education: BS-MS in biological science from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali, India. PhD from Technical University of Munich (degree awaiting) in the group of Prof. Kay Schneitz.

Non-scientific interests: hiking, traveling and photography. I was a regular hiker in the Alps mountains.

Brief bio: I completed my bachelors and masters from IISER Mohali, India (2017). My master’s thesis was on live time lapse imaging of floral meristem in Arabidopsis thaliana. I was so excited about microscopy and image analysis that I did my PhD on 3D digital organ atlas using Arabidopsis ovules as a model (2017-2021). This new and complex model organ brought several challenges on microscopy and 3D image data analysis. The project was approached in a collaborative manner with many computer scientists and biologists that opened new paths to 3D cell segmentation and image data analysis. My passion for microscopy is continued by my postdoc project on time lapse imaging of 3D leaf development at the Max Planck Institute, Cologne (2021- 2022).