Over the course of my career, I’ve flown across the US to attend a variety of imaging related instructional courses, all on the eastern seaboard. We are all familiar with the Woods Hole courses, the AQLM course, and so forth. What has boggled my mind is that here I am in the SF Bay area, surrounded by arguably the most densely populated and diverse centers of biological science innovation on earth, and there’s no major course?
I started pestering the owners of Technical Instruments about this one night, and they admitted the same question had long been on their minds. A few months later, we asked the NIC team at UCSF about it, and found to our surprise that they were already cooking something up. We offered to help as needed, and have been doing what we can to help support the course ever since.
So, UCSF/QB3 has just published their official webpage for the inaugural Microscopy and Imaging Course for 2012. (They let me design the website, I hope you like it!)
If you are a regular reader of my blog, I’ll assume you’re involved enough in imaging that you would stand to gain much from attending the course. This won’t be a “sit in classes all day” kind of deal. The course has been designed around a kinesthetic approach, with lectures taking roughly 50% of the time, and the other 50% being hands-on bench work.
If you live far away, or are having a rough funding year, please apply for a stipend for either the course tuition and/or travel. One of the initial course goals is to host the most geographically and vocationally diverse student group possible. So if you are thinking, “my work doesn’t fit the norm for the life science community” or “I’m not from one of the major research centers”, then you should apply!
I’ll be attending to support the course along with most of our outside team from TI. I hope to see you there!
-Austin