Microscopy and Image Analysis Platform Freiburg (MIAP-Freiburg)

• Applicant: Dr. Roland Nitschke
• Subject Area: Cell Biology ; Image and Language Processing, Computer Graphics and Visualisation, Human Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous and Wearable Computing ; Developmental Biology
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 284179733

The excellent, but still heterogeneous structure of facilities, research and development labor-atories in the area of microscopy and image analysis in Freiburg with approximately 500 us-ers from 150 workgroups will be integrated into a common unit, the Microscopy and Image Analysis Platform Freiburg (MIAP-Freiburg). The founders of the platform own together ap-proximately 40 large equipment units as defined by the DFG grant rules, as well as around 10 development and service units for microscopy and image analysis, which will be opened under a common web portal to a large number of external users from academia and industry. High international visibility will be ensured by the scientific excellence and joint expertise of the life and the computer sciences of the Albert-Ludwigs-University, the non-university re-search units of the Max-Planck-Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics and the Fraunho-fer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques, and two partners in Basel and also planned for a later stage in Strasbourg. MIAP-Freiburg will establish a series of interdisciplinary seminars and workshops covering in great depth special topics in microscopy and related fields. The activities, which are arranged as a co-operation of academia and industry, are targeted towards scientific users of micro-scopical techniques in the life and material sciences, computer scientists in the area of image analysis and software development, engineers and physicists from basic research, instrument developers in the whole area of microscopy and staff from imaging facilities world-wide. To cover hot-topics quickly, the workshop and seminar themes will be kept flexible and up to date by proposals out of the scientific and industry field. To foster the integration of the net-work and increase the international visibility, the workshops will be hosted at the home insti-tutes of the platform as well as of the partner sites in Basel. The concept is already supported by letter of intents (LOI) from 19 well established companies in the field of microscopy and related technology and software.The integration and extension of the available competences in the field of microscopy are milestones on Freiburgs way to a national node in the framework of a German Roadmap for microscopy resources as well as a member of the respective European network (Euro-BioImaging). The transnational collaboration with the imaging facilities in Basel and at a later stage in Strasbourg will substantiate this further. The series of seminars and workshops is an important step towards the definition of a curriculum for education of core facility staff, but also for scientists working at universities or industry within a research field using or developing high-end microscopy equipment or methods. The strong support and involvement of industry for this new format of workshops promises for a fruitful exchange with academia, as well as the newest high performance equipment allocated to the workshops

• DFG Programme: Core Facilities