Jacob Hecksher-Sørensen is a co-founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Vibraint ApS (Virtual Brain Technologies), the Copenhagen-based preclinical contract research organization specializing in whole brain imaging for neuroscience.

A developmental biologist by training, Jacob began his career in Scotland studying mouse embryos, using 3D microscopy to map how signalling pathways and genes control limb development. He later moved into industry, where his work shifted from embryos to adult mice, first investigating insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. By injecting a fluorescent GLP-1 molecule, his team could visualize beta cells across the whole pancreas, and from the same animals they began studying how GLP-1 was distributed in the brain. This led, almost by chance, to a lasting fascination with how drugs enter the brain and affect it. Working with light sheet microscopy, his team was among the first able to visualize at single-cell resolution how drugs cross the blood-brain barrier and which neurons they bind to and activate, work that became the foundation for Vibraint.

 Across more than two decades, Jacob has watched spatial biology, 3D microscopy, MRI, and AI mature in parallel. He founded Vibraint with co-founders Johanna Perens and Thomas Topilko in the conviction that these fields are now converging into one virtual space.