For 2021 the meeting is going virtual and we are taking this opportunity to invite and include our Canadian, Mexican and North American colleagues. Following on from the successful facility meetings to establish safe working practices in the COVID-19 era, it is a great opportunity to continue to collaborate and share knowledge.
From very humble beginnings, we have grown to a much more significant and influential community of facility managers. Numbers of attendees have grown 10 fold since the first meeting in 2006 as more and more facilities have opened. We now represent one of the best organised facility groupings in the UK if not indeed the world.
Following on from previous years, you can expect to find out more on the latest developments in UK Bioimaging and how we can feed in to wider international groups that are starting up. We will also discuss some of the basic elements (funding, impact measures) of running a core facility as well as the latest technological and application developments that effect ourselves and our users. Once again we will include Crib talks from attendees.
Scientific Organisers
-
Dr Alex Sossick
University of Cambridge
Alex heads the Imaging Facility at the Gurdon Institute, which includes a variety of microscopy techniques including confocal, high throughput and deconvolution. He is keen to raise the level of microscopy understanding and application, and runs and takes part in various microscopy courses. -
Dr Alison North
The Rockefeller University
Alison North is the Senior Director of the Bio-Imaging Resource Center and a Research Associate Professor at the Rockefeller University in New York, having established the center in April 2000. She was an undergraduate at Cambridge University, undertook her PhD at Oxford University, and performed post-doctoral research in Salzburg, Austria and then Manchester, UK, where she was subsequently awarded a Wellcome Trust Career Development fellowship.
Alison has advised and trained hundreds of Rockefeller University and external researchers in a wide variety of optical microscopy techniques. She serves as a reviewer and panelist for several international granting agencies and as a member of external advisory boards for various imaging facilities. She teaches on several microscopy courses, including directing the annual Optical Microscopy course at Woods Hole, MA, USA, gives regular invited microscopy lectures both nationally and internationally, and writes educational articles on microscopy. She is currently co-chair of the BioImaging North America network of imaging scientists. -
Professor Claire Brown
McGill University
Dr. Brown has been working in the field of quantitative light microscopy for over 25 years. As director of the Advanced BioImaging Facility (AIBF) at McGill University in Montreal, she oversees 16 state-of-the-art microscopes and an expert staff who serve ~300 users from diverse research areas in physical, life and health sciences. Through her work with the ABIF they have run more than 90 workshops and courses training thousands of researchers in fundamental and advanced imaging techniques including the Montreal Light Microscopy Course (MLMC). She also runs a research program focused on the development and application of biophysical techniques to understand the molecular mechanisms that regulate normal and pathological cell migration. Projects also focus on microscopy standards and quality control and optimal live cell imaging conditions to minimize phototoxicity. Knowing that we are stronger together and can learn so much from each other she is actively involved in several national and international networks including Canada BioImaging (CBI), BioImaging North America (BINA) and Global BioImaging (GBI).
-
Dr Peter O'Toole
RMS Vice President
University of York
Peter heads the Imaging and Cytometry Labs within the Technology Facility at the University of York which includes an array of confocal microscopes, flow cytometers and electron microscopes. Peter gained his PhD in the Cell Biophysics Laboratory at the University of Essex and has been involved in many aspects of fluorescence imaging. Research is currently focused on both technology and method development of novel probes and imaging modalities.Peter has ongoing collaborations with many leading microscopy and cytometry companies and his group also provides research support to many academics and commercial organisations. Peter is also heavily involved with teaching microscopy and flow cytometry which includes organising and teaching on both the RMS Light Microscopy Summer School and the RMS Practical Flow Cytometry courses.