ESRF user and Human Organ Atlas Hub co-chair Professor Maximilian Ackermann, from the RWTH University Aachen, University Mainz and Helios University Clinics Wuppertal, has been awarded the Lennart Nilsson Prize 2025 by the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm for his artistic images of human anatomy and pathology using notably the technique of Hierarchical Phase-Contrast Tomography (HiP-CT) at the ESRF, the European Synchrotron, Grenoble, France.
The Lennart Nilsson Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious awards in the field of scientific photography, recognises Ackermann’s achievements in the use of novel, unique high-resolution imaging techniques, and especially the use of Hierarchical Phase-Contrast Tomography (HiP-CT), developed at the ESRF, as well as his artistic view of the human anatomy and its pathological changes.
A pathologist at the University Hospital RWTH Aachen and Helios University Clinics Wuppertal and anatomist at the University Mainz, Ackermann is also co-chair of the Human Organ Atlas hub, where scientists and clinicians use HiP-CT technique at the European Synchrotron (ESRF) to provide valuable insights into human anatomy and diseases such as Covid-19, pulmonary fibrosis and cancer. A compendium of his artistic renderings of the human anatomy and numerous diseases can be found on the website PATHart.org.
The Human Organ Atlas Hub (HOAHub) is an international interdisciplinary scientific collaboration led by University College London (UCL) and the European Synchrotron (ESRF), with the University Medical Center Mainz, and the University Hospital RWTH Aachen. Funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, it aims to create a physical and virtual Hub that uses a novel technique developed at the ESRF, HiP-CT, to scan whole human organs with local cellular resolution, producing a “Human Organ Atlas in Health, Ageing and Disease“.
Read more on ESRF website
Image: The coloured scanning electron micrograph of a human lung with COVID19 infection shows numerous alveoli with inflammatory cells (yellow), hemorrhages (red) and hyaline membranes (blue).
Credit: M. Ackermann