Rate My Professor Sven Hildebrand

Sven Hildebrand is an Assistant Professor in the Multiscale Imaging of Brain Connectivity group within the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University. His academic journey began with a B.Sc. in Biology at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, where he started his studies in 2009. He then pursued an M.Sc. in Technical Biology at Technische Universität Darmstadt, during which he worked as a research assistant for nine months in Prof. Ralf Galuske's laboratory. In 2016, Hildebrand commenced his PhD at Maastricht University under the supervision of Prof. Alard Roebroeck, concentrating on the development of optical clearing methods for human brain tissue. He completed his doctorate cum laude in 2021, with the thesis titled Investigating human neocortical architecture in 3D: new approaches for clearing, labelling and imaging large samples. He was appointed Assistant Professor at Maastricht University in 2023, where he continues to advance techniques for structural investigations of the human neocortex.

Hildebrand's research specializes in 3D histological methods for optical tissue clearing and labelling, enabling meso- and microscale analysis of human neuroanatomy and brain organization variations across species. His key publications include The mesoSPIM initiative: open-source light-sheet microscopes for imaging cleared tissue (Nature Methods, 2019), Benchtop mesoSPIM: a next-generation open-source light-sheet microscope for cleared samples (Nature Communications, 2024), Scalable Labeling for Cytoarchitectonic Characterization of Large Optically Cleared Human Neocortex Samples (Scientific Reports, 2019), hFRUIT: An optimized agent for optical clearing of DiI-stained adult human brain tissue (Scientific Reports, 2020), Efficient 3D light-sheet imaging of very large-scale optically cleared human brain and prostate tissue samples (Communications Biology, 2023), and ht-MASH: a high-throughput, cost-effective, and robust protocol for microscopic 3D imaging of human angio- and cytoarchitecture in large human brain samples (Anatomical Science International, 2025). For his doctoral contributions, he received the Maastricht University Dissertation Prize in 2023. His work, with over 600 citations, significantly influences advancements in light-sheet microscopy and 3D brain imaging techniques.