This year’s Fall Meeting was held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Thursday, October 2nd.  The meeting kicked off with an open house at the University’s Electron Microscopy facility, hosted by facility director Dr. Alexander Ribbe. The Open House featured a presentation of EM equipment at UMass, facility tours and an EELS/EFTEM demo.

The meeting proper was held on the 10th floor of the Campus Center, in a spacious hall that afforded spectacular views of the autumn countryside — great microscopy isn’t the only perk of living in New England! After a buffet dinner, UMass’ own Dr. Ryan Hayward started off the evening’s lectures. Dr. Hayward showed us how optical microscopes can be used in 4D printing to manipulate and contour polymer gel sheets. He demonstrated how fluorescence microscopy can be used to generate photo-crosslinkable copolymers that form and fold into complex 3D shapes over time — just add water. Next, Dr. Andrew York from the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging & Bioengineering showcased his advances in improving light microscopy. He described the perks and pitfalls of latest imaging techniques and revealed how several of these problems could be avoided by using analog structured illumination microscopy.  Dr. York also highlighted the ability of Richardson-Lucy deconvolution to produce high resolution images by combining the components of several mixed-resolution images. As always, it was a lovely evening filled with great food, great company, and great science.

Rylie Walsh
2014 Corresponding Secretary


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