MIC Research Day 2024

On June 26, 2024, more than 180 participants from the Universities of Bern, Fribourg and Zurich, the EPFL in Lausanne and representatives from industry attended the traditional MIC Research Day, which took place at the Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences (DCBP). The balanced program of the event was presented by microscopists Li Xin, Isabel Schultz-Pernice, Saiko Yoshida, Oleksiy-Zakhar Khoma, Alicia Borgeaud, Divyansh Gautam, Matis Preza, Reto Lang and Benjamin Towbin, ranging from PhD students to established researchers and coming from all three faculties of the MIC (Vetsuisse, Natural Sciences and Medicine). In excellent presentations, these scientists showed the broad spectrum of microscopy applications represented in the MIC community.

In addition, Peter Gehr, Professor Emeritus of the Institute of Anatomy and co-founder of the MIC, spoke about the history of the MIC. Two students of the PhD specialization program Cutting Edge Microscopy (CEM) presented the key elements of the CEM program. Dimitri Vanhecke invited the MIC community to the MIC Symposium 2024 on November 15 in Fribourg, with the theme "Bio-inspired Materials & Bio-Engineering". Arne Seitz from the Microscopy Facility of the EPFL promoted the LS2 intersection Microscopy, which forms an organ of the Swiss microscopy community. Martin Frenz and Volker Heussler were officially thanked for their many years of service as MIC committee members, Volker Heussler also being a member of the MIC board for several years. Our special guest Nicholas James Desnoyer from the University of Zurich gave a breathtaking presentation on the development of plants in live imaging. Nicholas wowed the MIC community with his enthusiasm and dedication to showing the beauty of nature in pictures and movies.

As usual, this event offered numerous opportunities for networking among imaging professionals at the University of Bern. To encourage networking, a meet-the-expert session was offered during lunch. Networking was also supported by the industry partners with their exhibition and industry talk, which fitted well into the event. We would like to thank all CEM PhD students for their help with the organization, all participants for their enthusiasm for microscopy and the event sponsors for their generous financial support. 

Please find some impressions from the MIC Research Day 2024 here.