Edinburgh Super-resolution Imaging Consortium Summer School 2018

The fifth annual summer school of the Edinburgh Super-Resolution Imaging Consortium (ESRIC) took place at the MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine from the 16th - 20th July. It was attended by 32 students who came from as far afield as Canada and Australia to learn from leaders in the field and access state of the art technologies: August 2018

ESRIC, a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University, is an open facility which provides researchers with training and access to state-of-the-art imaging technologies. ESRIC holds a summer school as well as a symposium annually.

During the first two days of the summer school, delegates were taken through the theory of super-resolution microscopy techniques. Some returning lecturers have contributed to the summer school programme since the first one in 2014.

• Silvio Rizzoli, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen: sample preparation and stimulated emission depletion microscopy.
• Sebastian Van de Linde, University of Strathclyde: overview of single molecular localisation technologies.

ESRIC also welcomed new teaching faculty members for the 2018 programme:

• Jonathan Grimm, Janelia Research Campus: fluorescent probes and dyes
• Sara Abrahamsson, UC Santa Cruz: structured illumination microscopy
• Sandrine Leveque-Fort, Institut des Sciences Moléculaires d'Orsay: supercritical angle fluorescence emission
• Ricardo Henriques, University College London: quality control and image analysis in super-resolution microscopy

After learning the theory, the delegates spent three days in groups rotating around workshops led by ESRIC’s industry partners to see the technologies in action. These included STED, SIM, Airyscan, SMLM and multi-camera imaging, led by Leica, Nikon, Zeiss, Olympus and Hamamatsu who have supported the summer school since its inception. New workshops for this year focused on super-resolution microscopy in live samples, with Nikon presenting Visitech’s iSIM and Andor presenting the SRRF-Stream modality on their Dragonfly system with Ricardo Henriques.

The summer school week left delegates brimming with research ideas and new global collaborative connections were established over the social programme of dinners and a walking tour of Edinburgh.

The ESRIC summer school is made possible through the support of its speakers, industry partners and sponsors which include the BBSRC, the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Microscopical Society who co-organised the event for second year running.

Related links

ESRIC’s website: www.ESRIC.org