About me
I am broadly interested in scientific research. While my career thus far focused on image processing for cryo-electron tomography, I am actively seeking opportunities to apply my skill set to new challenges both within and beyond image processing across the natural sciences. I am devoted to a lifelong secular pilgrimage to understand the nature of reality through sustained study of philosophy, mathematics, and the physical sciences.
Currently
2025-2027
I am a Postdoctoral fellow at the INRIA Centre Rennes, a site of Inria, the French National Institute for Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. Within the SAIRPICO (Space-time imaging, artificial intelligence and computing for cellular and chemical biology) team led by Dr. Charles Kervrann which develops mathematical and computational methods to study the spatiotemporal organisation and dynamics of molecular and cellular processes, my work focuses on developing image processing methods that bridge light microscopy and cryo-electron tomography.
Previously
2021-2025
I carried out my PhD supervised by Dr. Daniel Lévy and Dr. Manuela Dezi at the Physical Chemistry Curie Lab, an interdiscipinary research unit of Institut Curie that uses physics to understand living matter. While my team specialises in molecular microscopy of membranes by means of in vitro reconstitution and cryo-electron microscopy, my project was focused on the development and application of image processing methods for characterising membrane morphologies and resolving membrane protein structures from cryo-electron tomography data.
2018-2021
Before I started my PhD, I was a master student at Heidelberg University, where I focused my coursework in bioinformatics and computational biology. Through research internships, I gained experience in the fields of microfluidics (synthetic biology), proteomics (cancer biology), single-cell RNA sequencing (evolution), molecular dynamics (biochemical physics), and image processing for cryo-electron tomography (virology).
2015-2018
I completed my bachelor study in science at University College Utrecht, an honours college of Utrecht University, where I focused on the following subjects (tracks): cognitive neuroscience, chemistry, molecular cell biology, & medicine (gained pre-med qualification). Some topics of my track-finishing projects: spatial perception, brain imaging with fMRI/MRI, drug design, and plant molecular biology. Topics of my research internships: therapeutic nanoparticles, development and cancer modelling in organoids.
Future
2027-?
I intend to pursue, ideally, an assistant professorship or another postdoctoral position following the completion of my first postdoctoral contract. I plan to continue working in the field of image processing, or more broadly, computational imaging, with applications to treating and interpreting scientific images. I am currently invested in the following relevant aspects: deep learning architectures for limited training data, physics-informed image reconstruction methods, and explainable methods. I am not actively seeking industrial positions, but I would be glad to support NGOs, think tanks, startups and companies that make positive environmental and social impacts.
Hobbies
As a child, I practised gymnastics, learnt to play the piano, won awards in art and creative writing competitions. As a teen, my interests completely shifted to sciences. Instead, I won awards in Olympiad maths, innovative physics, and academic debate competitions.
Nowadays, since my work happens to be my major hobby, I am taking it easy. I enjoy going around on my kickscooter, taking care of my pet lizard and his live food, struggling to play the majestic otamatone well (one day), doing amateur landscape photography when I travel and/or hike, going urban exploring, bouldering, and playing DnD or games alike with friends, I dungeon master.
Contact
INRIA Centre Rennes, Campus de Beaulieu, 263 Av. Général Leclerc, 35042 Rennes
cyan.ching@inria.fr