Latest eBIC news

Prof. Sir Dave Stuart presenting introduction and aims

Date: 19^th July 2024
Location: The Royal Society (London)

The UK CryoEM Community Meeting jointly organised by Diamond Light Source and Instruct-ERIC, brought together the UK structural biology community along with relevant funders. The goal was to provide a forum for highlighting science opportunities in the field of cryo-electron microscopy (CroyEM). The meeting aimed to create a white paper forming the basis for a 10-year strategic roadmap for CryoEM in the UK. Addressing funding needs was a key focus.

The meeting attracted a diverse mix of attendees, including both senior and young researchers and featured a selection of talks, fostering knowledge exchange and collaboration. Morning presentations chaired by Helen Saibil, began with an introduction and setting of aims from David Stuart, and afternoon sessions were chaired by Xiaodong Zhang from Imperial College London.

Speaker sessions through the day included presentations covering national centres and training, CL3, regional centres and small labs, industry perspectives, international status and opportunities, Single Particle Analysis, Electron Tomography, Software/Data management including AI.

Following each speaker session there were very productive discussions, followed by a final session that involved a series of focused round table discussions, that were summarised at the end of the meeting. The general consensus reached was that a well-equipped national facility as well as well-equipped regional centres and small labs will be essential in maintaining the UK as a world leader in cryoEM related research and development.

For more details on the agenda for the day, presentation topics and speakers, please visit the official Diamond event announcement: UK CryoEM Community Meeting – July 2024.

 14th August 2024

eBIC are proud to announce eBIC's Director, Prof. Peijun Zhang has been elected
as a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) this year.

Follow this link to read the full Diamond news article: Diamond scientist honoured with EMBO membership

Read more in eMBO's press release here, on the outstanding scientists
elected as members in EMBO’s 60^th anniversary year.

12th July 2024

This last year eBIC have been excited to welcome new members to the team, with Senior Electron Microscope Scientists: Parijat Majumder, spearheading the development of the cryo-correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM) pipeline, and Kyle Dent interested in software approaches for automation of the cryoEM experiment.

Electron Microscope Scientists: Weng Ming Ng who initiated his own research after being awarded the Wellcome Early-Career award, and Emma Buzzard with interests in the fast-growing field of in situ cryo-EM.

Also joining the eBIC team are Post Doctoral Research Associates: Cedric Vallee, Yakun Tang, Sam Clark, Liam Mead, Gangshun Yi and Cecile Fort.

Welcome to all!

10th July 2024

We were delighted to host our largest ‘Biological Cryo-Imaging (BCI) User Meeting’ yet this year, with over 700 participants, including 200 in person joining us from around the world. The event took place on April 30th in Nottingham and provided a unique opportunity for attendees to stay informed about the latest developments at eBIC & B24, learn about cutting-edge research conducted by our user community, connect with our scientific team and have their say in our future developments and direction of the beamlines at eBIC and B24.

This year, we also hosted three interactive satellite sessions giving attendees the chance to delve deeper into topics such as correlative microscopy, soft X-ray tomography, and live cryo-EM data processing with experts in the field.

Our heartfelt thanks extend to our keynote speakers: Vicki Gold (University of Exeter), Mangala Srinivas (Wageningen University), and Stefan Raunser (Max Planck Institute, Dortmund) for their insightful talks. We also would like to thank users of eBIC and B24 who presented research talks, including Sasha Evans (King’s College London), Elsa N Astorga-Simón (CICbioGUNE), and Edward Lant (University of Warwick).

A very special thanks to our sponsors for making this event possible —Dectris, Quantum Detectors, SubAngstrom, ThermoFisher Scientific, Nanosoft, CryoSol, CryoCloud, Gatan Ametek and Single Particle – your support is deeply appreciated.

A special mention also goes to eBIC’s own Dave Farmer for his outstanding photography and David Owen for his impromptu stand-up comedy. We would also like to express a huge congratulations to Thermo Fisher Scientific‘s Alan Boswell on receiving the well-deserved lifetime achievement award for his outstanding contributions to cryo-EM. 

Lastly, we extend our thanks to CCP-EM for holding the BCI User Meeting alongside the 10th anniversary of the CCP-EM Spring Symposium (held on May 1st-2nd).

15th May 2024

eBIC were pleased to welcome a group from MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge visiting Diamond on 27th March 2024, for a day of talks and discussions, with tours of the electron Bio-Imaging Centre and Rosalind Franklin Institute. Thank you to all our speakers for their excellent talks, covering facility and cryo-FIB updates, and research presentations. We are looking forward to next time!

Talks included presentations from:
Yuriy Chaban - eBIC facility update
Giuseppe Cannone - Update of LMB-EMF
James Gilchrist - CryoFIB/Lift-out
Zhexin Wang - Cryo-FIB and volume imaging using Zeiss Crossbeam
Patrick Phillips - Correlative workflow to study coronavirus replication organelles by cryo-electron tomography
Sami Chaaban - Overcoming challenges in single particle analysis of filaments
Zhen Hou - Green Tracing: A molecular journey of thylakoid biogenesis
Rangana Warshamanage - Tomography in Relion 5 and CCPEM

April 2024

Earlier this year Kyprianos Hadjidemetriou a Post-Doctoral Research Associate (PDRA) at our electron Bio-Imaging Centre (eBIC) was successful with his Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) proposal, and has this month begun a new phase in his research made possible by the award and funding by the Horizon Europe Guarantee Scheme*.

The MSCA-PF award is a highly competitive funding route and rated as one of Europe’s most prestigious awards. It aims to support the best and most promising researchers at all stages of their careers, regardless of age and nationality.

Kyprianos applied for the fellowship in 2022 with the support of our Research Support Team having joined the eBIC team in January 2022 to undertake Post-Doctoral research on Bacterial Chemotaxis using cryo-Electron Tomography (cryoET). Previously, Kyprianos was working for his Ph.D. project in DYNAMOP group at the Institut de Biologie Structurale (Grenoble, France) under the supervision of Dr. Martin Weik. His Ph.D. work focused on the study of light-sensitive proteins using time-resolved serial femtosecond crystallography at X-ray free electron lasers (XFELs).

Read the full Diamond news article here (September 2023) 

September 2023