In January 2024, the lab attended the Bruker UK SPM/AFM Users Meeting 2024. It was a privilege to attend the event which was held at the Henry Royce Institute in Manchester. The days were split into two with demonstrations of incredible microscope technology in the morning followed by an afternoon of fascinating, frontier pushing science. As single molecule, bio-AFM users it was particularly interesting to hear about developments in other SPM technologies. For example, AFM-IR which allows the operator to gather information about their sample surface as well as infrared spectra helping identify the materials it contains and it was intriguing to think about how this could be applied to our work.
Two standout talks came from our very own Max Gamill, who described recent advances in TopoStats’ ability to resolve topology from AFM images and Dr Laia Pasquina Lemonche, who discussed her work developing software to study bacteria with the aim of developing new antibiotics, which was thought provoking and very exciting.
In the evening, we attended a meal where it was an absolute pleasure to listen to Dr Alex Ramadan tell the story of her journey to academia. The food was amazing and one of the highlights of the evening was the AFM quiz, which caused an unexpected explosion of competitiveness between tables.
Alice presenting our work on automating tracking and tracing of DNA
Overall, the conference was a blend of mind -blowing science and discussions with enthusiastic microscopists! We’re looking forward to next years event.