mmc2017: Manchester, July 03-06

Jun 21 2017

The Microscience Microscopy Congress is always able to boast a wide range of unique features which are available for both conference delegates and exhibition visitors to enjoy. The Microscience Microscopy Congress is set to be as big and as bold as ever with six parallel conference sessions, an exhibition with more than 100 companies represented, and a brilliant selection of features such as pre-event workshops and turn-up-and-learn training opportunities.

Confirmed Plenary Speakers at the Microscience Microscopy Congress 2017:

Professor Bridget Carragher, New York Structural Biology Centre

Professor Carragher is currently Professor at the New York Structural Biology Centre (NYSBC) and a Director of their Electron Microscopy department where she aims to investigate the intermolecular interactions and domain architectures of macromolecules within their native cellular assemblies.

Professor Carragher is one of the leaders of the “Resolution Revolution” in the Cryo EM field. She has been one of the early adapters of the Direct Electron Detectors and as part of NRAMM (National Resource for Automated Molecular Microscopy) worked on the development of Leginon, an automated software for image acquisition of Cryo Electron Microscopy images. She has been involved in a variety of training courses for Cryo EM, including an EMBO course run at Birkbeck London.

Dr Lucy Collinson, Francis Crick Institute

Dr Collinson is Head of Electron Microscopy at The Francis Crick Institute in London and is well-regarded in the field of 3D CLEM. Since completing her post-doc, Dr Collinson has run biological EM facilities, first at UCL and then at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute, which became part of the new Francis Crick Institute in 2015. Her experience in running facilities has led to her sitting on an advisory board for the Science and Technology Facilities Council as well as being invited to speak at conferences all over the world.

Dr Collinson’s interests cover 3D EM, Correlative Light and EM, X-ray microscopy, image analysis, and microscope design and prototyping.

Professor Ralf Jungmann, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry

Professor Jungmann is well-known for his work with super resolution on DNA molecules and more specifically, DNA-PAINT.
DNA-PAINT, involves creating "imager strands" by tagging small pieces of DNA with a fluorescent dye. Each of these imager strands binds transiently to a matching DNA strand that is attached to a target molecule, which makes the target appear to blink. Such blinking, when done right, allows researchers to obtain sub-diffraction resolution single molecule images. Professor Jungmann was also part of a team that demonstrated, using 3D DNA-PAINT for imaging, a method for creating larger one-step self-assembling DNA cages.

Professor Jungmann’s group at MPI are now working on extending DNA-PAINT to eventually being able to perform highly multiplexed (hundreds of targets), ultra-resolution (<5 nm), and quantitative (integer counting of molecules) imaging of biomolecules (i.e. proteins and nucleic acids) and their interactions.

Dr Frances Ross, IBM

Frances M. Ross received her B.A. in Physics and Ph.D. in Materials Science from Cambridge University. Her postdoc was at A.T.&T. Bell Laboratories, using in situ electron microscopy to study silicon oxidation and dislocation dynamics. She then joined the National Center for Electron Microscopy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she imaged anodic etching of Si. Moving to IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center, she built a program around a microscope with deposition and focused ion beam capabilities and developed closed liquid cell microscopy to image electrochemical processes. Her interests include liquid cell microscopy, epitaxy, nanowires and electrodeposition. She has been a Visiting Scientist at Lund University and an Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University. She received the UK Institute of Physics Boys Medal, the MSA Burton Medal and MRS Outstanding Young Investigator and Innovation in Materials Characterization Awards, holds an Honorary Doctorate from Lund, and is a Fellow of APS, AAAS, MRS, MSA and AVS.

Professor John Spence FRS, Arizona State University

Professor Spence is Richard Snell Professor of Physics at Arizona State University and Director of Science for the National Science Foundation BioXFEL Science and Technology Centre on the application of X-Ray Free-electron lasers to structural biology.

His research focuses on atomic-resolution electron microscopy for imaging atomic processes in solids, defects and bonding in materials, and instrumentation development for new microscopies. His lab’s work, applying X-ray lasers to biology, was listed in Science as one of the top scientific breakthroughs of 2012. Most recently, he has devoted his research to biological applications of femtosecond X-ray diffraction at the Linac Coherent Light Source at Stanford, the world's first hard X-ray laser, where they use X-ray pulses so brief that they terminate before atoms move, to determine the structure of membrane proteins and viruses which are notoriously difficult to crystallize, in their native environment.

Professor Brian J Ford HonFRMS

Professor Ford is a microscopist and former chartered biologist who has made a significant contribution to microscopy and biology and to the popularisation of these fields. Professor Ford, who is resident in Cambridgeshire, is known internationally for his thought-provoking lectures, books and broadcasts. Professor Ford has written many books on microscopy and innumerable research papers in publications including Nature, the British Medical Journal, Cell, and Scientific American. He is a leading Leeuwenhoek scholar with hundreds of research publications including his discovery of Leeuwenhoek’s original specimens dating back to 1674 at the Royal Society in London. Professor Ford has been a Fellow of the Society since 1962 and first featured in RMS publications over fifty years ago. Professor Ford lectures around the world, is a Fellow of Cardiff University and is based at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge.

Free features at mmc2017:

The Learning Zone is a tremendous free feature of the exhibition which is open to all visitors and conference delegates. It has been a major part of our flagship event since 2002. Speak to experts, learn something new, ask questions, and develop your knowledge. Do bring your samples and ask for advice.

RMS Scientific Imaging Competition : At each Microscience Microscopy Congress, the shortlisted images from the Royal Microscopical Society's Scientific Imaging Competition are displayed for all visitors to see, with the winners being announced during the event.

Free commercial workshops: mmc2017 will continue the acclaimed programme of special "hands-on" workshops. They enable the visitor to learn more about the practical details of the conference topics and microscopy in general.

Satellite Meetings: The mmc2017 conference programme includes sessions from the Royal Microscopical Society who organise the annual SPM and Frontiers in BioImaging meetings, the EMAG Group of the Institute of Physics, the Microscopy Society of Ireland and the Scottish Microscopy Group. Sessions will include:

Cross Disciplimary EM and LM Meeting -Taking place on Monday 3 July, this meeting will bring together a wide variety of imaging scientists to share best practice and agree joint initiatives.

FIB and EM Prep User Group Meeting - Taking place on Tuesday 4 July, this meeting is aimed at researchers, failure analysis engineers, PhD students, and anyone having a need to understand today’s FIB and EM sample preparation technologies.

NEUBIUS Bioimage Analyst Community Meeting- Taking place on Wednesday 5 July, this meeting from the new Network of European BioImage Analysts will explain NEUBIAS aims and activities and start to build a coherent UK bioimage analyst community.

BMTA Seminar- Taking place on Thursday 6 July, this new partnership between the mmc-series and the British Measurement and Testing Association offers mmc2017 visitors the chance to attend a seminar on Industrial Optical Inspection.

For further details visit www.rms.org