UK Meeting: Advanced Electron Microscopy Working Group

A working group to discuss within the UK electron microscopy community about coordinating capital investment and recurrent support for advanced EM facilities

The Working Group is now ready to report on its proposals, and we would now like to consult with the wider EM community through a further EM Community Town Hall meeting to be held in London on Wednesday 9^th April 2014. Members of the Electron Microscopy community are invited to attend this event. The meeting will start at 10.30 am and end at 4.40 pm, and lunch will be available. If you would like to, and are able to attend the meeting, you can register by emailing Allison Winton awinton@rms.org.uk with your contact details (name, postal and email address), together with any special access or dietary requirements.

Following some informal discussion within the UK electron microscopy community about coordinating capital investment and recurrent support for advanced EM facilities, a community meeting was held in 2009 to discuss whether there was any support for a “distributed facility” model. One outcome of that meeting was agreement that a working group be established to develop a model or models in more detail. The formation of that working group was suspended during the bidding process and the establishment of SuperSTEM as an EPSRC Mid-Range facility. Recently, Rik Brydson and Pete Nellist have been encouraged by the EPSRC to form a working group to look at the current provision in high-performance electron microscopy, to identify where there are possible gaps and to develop possible funding models. The terms of reference for the working group and other information can be found on the RMS website; www.rms.org