EVENT: Microimaging at The University of Western Australia

The availability of cutting-edge core facilities is becoming an ever more important success factor in high-impact science. Beyond the latest in instrumentation, a key driver of success is high-level academic support of techniques and instruments to ensure their use is part of a vibrant academic interdisciplinary engagement that produces quality outcomes.

The mission of the Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis (CMCA) is to support the University of Western Australia’s research-intensive function by enabling and facilitating such high-impact research. This mission extends beyond UWA into the local Western Australian, national and international research communities.

In this talk, I will describe the CMCA’s facilities in transmission and scanning electron microscopy, including its emerging strength in biological electron microscopy, its ion microprobe facility (NanoSIMS and 1280) which is unique in the world, and its capability in optical and confocal microscopy, automated digital histology, flow cytometry, cell sorting and laser microdissection. I will describe how to access these facilities, and give examples spread widely across the sciences of the outcomes they have helped to achieve. I will describe the CMCA’s role in national facilities through its participation in the Australian Microscopy and Microanalysis Research Facility (AMMRF) and describe the framework under which local, national and international access is available to its facilities and a wide range of others within the AMMRF representing the leading edge in characterisation.

Finally, I will touch on what is just over the horizon for the CMCA and how we are planning to get there, including the UWA Bioimaging Initiative, the Western Australian Preclinical Imaging Facility, and performing microscopy in living humans.