Miriam Menzel

Miriam Menzel is an Assistant Professor of Imaging Physics at the Department of Imaging Physics (ImPhys) within the Faculty of Applied Sciences at Delft University of Technology since 2022. She leads the Menzel Lab focused on developing Computational Scattered Light Imaging (ComSLI) for biomedical applications, particularly in neuroimaging and tissue structure analysis. Prior to her current position, she was a Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford School of Medicine (2021-2022) and a PostDoc at Forschungszentrum Jülich's Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (2018-2022).

Her educational background includes:

• PhD in Physics from RWTH Aachen University / Forschungszentrum Jülich (2018)
• M.Sc./B.Sc. in Physics from RWTH Aachen University (2009-2013)
• Imperial College International Diploma in Physics, London (2012-2013)

Dr. Menzel's research focuses on exploiting the scattering of visible light to resolve complex fiber structures in biological tissues. Her lab developed Computational Scattered Light Imaging (ComSLI), a technique that allows disentangling densely interwoven fiber pathways with micrometer resolution using standard optical components. Unlike other techniques requiring dedicated equipment and time-consuming raster-scanning, ComSLI provides fiber orientational information for all image pixels in parallel. The technique is label-free and can be applied to various tissue types including brain, muscle, and collagen fibers, making it highly versatile for both research and potential clinical applications.

Her recent publications demonstrate a clear trajectory toward improving ComSLI's speed through compressed sensing, expanding applications to multiple tissue types beyond neuroanatomy, and developing multimodal integration with polarimetry. The research spans fundamental optics development, advanced signal processing, and clinical translation, particularly in cancer diagnostics through tissue architecture analysis.

Her scientific recognition includes:

• Klaus Tschira Boost Fund (2021)
• Helmholtz Doctoral Prize (2019)
• Klaus Tschira Boost Fellow designation

Dr. Menzel actively supervises Master's thesis projects at TU Delft, welcoming students with backgrounds in applied physics, nanobiology, microscopy, or data science to work at the interface of computational imaging and biomedical research. Her lab is currently developing hardware for high-throughput ComSLI measurements, advanced signal analysis techniques using machine learning, multimodal imaging systems combining scattered and polarized light, and exploring clinical applications in cancer diagnostics through tissue architecture analysis.

The Menzel Lab is establishing ComSLI as a powerful tool for visualizing complex fiber structures across multiple biological systems, with ongoing work focused on hardware miniaturization for clinical applications and expanding the technique's capabilities to provide additional tissue metrics like fiber diameter information.