The 2023 edition of the Symposium, which is also the culmination of the BIST Master’s Winter School, payed especial attention to the topic of machine learning on image analysis.
The ICFO Auditorium hosted last Friday a new edition of the BIST Symposium on Microscopy, Nanoscopy and Imaging Sciences, an annual event open to the entire community which brings together internationally renowned keynote speakers and members of the BIST Community.
The four morning talks focused on electron microscopy and some of its latests developments and applications, with reference speakers as Christina Scheu, from the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung, who presented the use of scanning transmission electron microscopy to solve imperfections in solar cells dedicated to generate electricity, and Sergei V. Kalinin from the University of Tennessee, who talked about the recent progress in automated experiment in electron microscopy. The audience could also learn from Patricia Abellan (Institute of Materials of Nantes Jean Rouxel, CNRS) and Carmen Rubio-Verdú, who has recently joined ICFO as a new faculty member and Group Leader.
In the afternoon, the talks by Sophie Brasselet (Institute Fresnel), Ricardo Henriques (Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência) and Giovanni Volpe (University of Gothenburg), focused on optical microscopy and machine learning.
Carmen Rubio-Verdú, new group leader at ICFO, during her talk at the Symposium
An opportunity for Master Students to present their work
The Symposium is part of the BIST Master of Multidisciplinary Research in Experimental Sciences curriculum. Its celebration marks the culmination of the Winter School on Microscopy, Nanoscopy, and Imaging Sciences, coordinated by the ICREA research professors at ICFO and ICN2, respectively, Maria García Parajo and Jordi Arbiol. During the Symposium poster session, the students present their projects in front of a dedicated evaluation panel, which later decides on the best ones to award.
“This experience is very enlightening as you get to meet a lot of new people from different backgrounds. It’s challenging and brainstorming … you get to listen to new ideas, which you never thought could exist in your study.” said the MMRES student Mrinalini Parmar, who also won the “Prize from the public” for her poster “Quantitative estimation of oral Microbiome in Health and Disease”, a work done at IRB Barcelona under the supervision of Toni Gabaldón.
The MMRES student Mrinalini Parmar receiving the “Prize from the public” from Sara Martí Sanchez, one of the Symposium Coordinators; and Míriam Navarro, Co-Coordinator of the MMRES
The two students awarded by the evaluation committee were Alex Barclay, who presented his work on genome engineering in colorectal cancer, done at CRG and supervised by Marc A Martí-Renom; and Guillem Posas, with the work “Deciphering the communication between tissues during circadian rhythms”, done at IRB Barcelona and supervised by Salvador Aznar-Benitah and Thomas Mortimer.
The MMRES students also trained their communication skills by introducing the speakers in the Symposium.
The Class 2022-2023 of the MMRES after the poster session, with their works exposed
The 2023 BIST Symposium on Microscopy, Nanoscopy and Imaging Sciences is organised in collaboration with ICFO and ICN2, and sponsored in part by the Sociedad de Microscopia de España, the European Microscopy Society and Thermo Fisher.
