As part of the ongoing collaboration under the Wellcome Trust Bioimaging Technology Development Award, the BioRTC team — Prof. Mahmoud Bukar Maina, Zaid Muhammad, and Mubarak Ismail — recently visited the Imaging and Cytometry Laboratory at the University of York.

The visit aimed to deepen institutional ties and collect preliminary datasets to support the next phase of the project, which focuses on building scalable and accessible imaging technologies for biomedical research in Africa.

Working closely with Prof. Will Brackenbury’s lab, the BioRTC team captured live-cell imaging data using state-of-the-art platforms such as Tomocube and Livecyte, building on datasets previously generated with BioRTC’s ioLight microscope.

For Mubarak Ismail, this visit provided hands-on experience in high-content imaging and machine learning-based phenotyping using tools like CellPhe — a critical step in developing AI-powered pipelines tailored for low-resource settings.

This initiative continues BioRTC’s mission to:

Expand technical imaging capacity across Africa

Democratize access to advanced microscopy tools

Empower early-career African scientists through skills transfer and research exchange

We look forward to pushing this work forward — and to a future where affordable, cutting-edge imaging is the norm across the African continent.