For the first time, all five major microscopy companies joined PicoQuant's annual course on Time-resolved Microscopy. Besides the organizer PicoQuant, instructors of Leica, Nikon, Olympus, and Zeiss came to Berlin and provided practical sessions on their confocal microscopes. The annual course took place for the seventh time from February 24 to 26 and was fully booked with 46 participants from all around the world.
Lectures by renowned scientists accompanied the six practical sessions. This year, Ingo Gregor and Fred Wouters from the University of Göttingen, Mark Hink from the University of Amsterdam, Chris Dunsby from the Imperial College London, Johan Hofkens from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and Rainer Erdmann, Managing Director of PicoQuant provided the theory that preceded the hands-on experiments in the afternoon.
The scope of the course is to provide an in-depth introduction to principles and applications of time-resolved fluorescence microscopy from a theoretical and experimental point of view. The hands-on experiments covered different methods and procedures in (time-resolved) fluorescence microscopy such as FLIM, FLIM-FRET, FCS (auto- and cross correlation), FLCS, single molecule spectroscopy, and STED super-resolution microscopy. The experiments were conducted on time-resolved confocal microscopes from PicoQuant and laser scannnig microscopes from Nikon, Leica, Olympus, and Zeiss, each upgraded with time-resolved data acquisition capabilities using the dedicated kit from PicoQuant.
The excellent program with market-leading companies was very well reiceived by the participants who found the course very inspiring. Due to the positive feedback, PicoQuant already plans to repeat the program at next year's course that will take place in March 2016.