Monash University has become host to the new Victorian node of Microscopy Australia

Monash University, the ARC Centre of Excellence in Advanced Molecular Imaging Administering Organisation, has become host to the new and only Victoria node of Microscopy Australia, a consortium of university-based microscopy facilities that enables access to an array of high-end microscopy platforms and associated technical expertise in strategic locations to efficiently service Australia’s microscopy needs.

Monash University joins the ARC Imaging CoE’s University of Queensland and University of New South Wales nodes as part of the Microscopy Australia association.

The new node, which will now provide access to state-of-the-art microscopy infrastructure and skilled staff at Monash University through the Microscopy Australia framework, was celebrated in an official launch event on Tuesday 3rd September at Monash’s Clayton Campus.

Addressing the guests representing the wider university microscopy research community, Monash University’s Vice-Provost (Research & Research Infrastructure) Professor Ian Smith who said the Victorian offering of a Microscopy Australia node is, in fact, a partnership between the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy and the Ramaciotti Centre for Cryo-Electron Microscopy.

Prof James Whisstock, Director of the ARC CoE in Advanced Molecular Imaging

The structural and cell biology community is very pleased with the instrumentation and access that this new collaboration provides and we are looking forward to seeing the impact that this has in the Australian scientific community,” said Prof Whisstock, Director of the ARC Imaging CoE.

“Under the leadership of Professor Jo Etheridge, the University’s investment into a dedicated electron microscopy centre has provided research at the frontier of a time where characterisation and imaging of materials science has advanced so significantly, we can now do this down to an atomic level.”

“At a molecular level, Monash has also been at the forefront of cryo-electron microscopy, with the country’s first and most powerful microscope for biological electron microscopy, the Titan KRIOS. Cryo-EM is a technique so powerful that it won the original developers a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2017,” said Prof Smith.

This article was published by R&RI Monash University and republished here with permission.