Aubrey Weigel

Aubrey Weigel is currently a Project Scientist of the Cellular Organelle Segmentation in Electron Microscopy (COSEM) Project Team at HHMI – Janelia Research Campus. The team uses advanced imaging technologies to study the ultrastructure and dynamics of subcellular organelles under both healthy and pathological conditions. Aubrey’s previous research background is in biophysics, with an emphasis in microscopy. Her formal training is in physics and engineering. During her graduate work Aubrey was the co-discoverer of ergodicity breaking in cells along with Diego Krapf, driving a pivotal shift in the field of diffusion analysis in living systems. Throughout her postdoctoral career under the guidance of Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, she applied her training in physics and microscopy directly to answer biological questions. Here, Aubrey unraveled the underlying structure of the endoplasmic reticulum and revealed its complex dynamics. She also uncovered the nano-anatomy of early secretory compartments and discovered a new, dynamic organelle, responsible for delivering newly synthesized cargo from the endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi. Aubrey’s recent work as the leader of the COSEM project includes developing an invaluable tool for cell biology - an analysis pipeline based on deep learning architectures for segmentation - allowing comprehensive reconstruction and analysis of organelles within entire cells imaged by volumetric electron microscopy. Aubrey is committed to integrating her multi-disciplinary training into facilitating large-effort, collaborative, team projects to take on challenging scientific problems and sharing these resources with the broader scientific community.