About Imperial College London, United Kingdom
Imperial College London is one of the world's leading universities with an international reputation for excellence in teaching and research. Imperial's 17,000 students and 8,000 staff are expanding the frontiers of knowledge in science, medicine, engineering and business, and translating their discoveries into benefits for our society.
Established in 2021, the Imperial College London and Leica Microsystems Imaging Hub is based at Imperial’s White City and South Kensington campuses, where it opens its doors to researchers from across the wider scientific community.
Transcript of the interview
Dr. Periklis Pantazis
Director Imperial College London and Leica Microsystems Imaging Hub
We are here at Imperial College London. My name is Periklis Pantazis, I’m a Professor of advanced optical precision imaging and I'm also Director of the Imperial College London and Leica Microsystems Imaging Hub. The Leica Imaging hub was established in 2021, and the initial discussions about the collaboration on optical imaging started in 2018. It's a strategic collaboration on optical imaging between Imperial College London and Leica Microsystems.
Miguel Hermida Ayala
Deputy Technical Operations Manager for the Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London
The Imperial Leica Imaging Hub is based in the Bioengineering Department. We get users from all sorts of backgrounds and levels of expertise. We have more traditional biologists, that are usually more confident using these kinds of microscopes, but we also work very closely with other departments, in engineering for example, that traditionally don't use these kinds of microscopes.
We have all sorts of technology and applications that we support, ranging from traditional confocal microscopy to widefield microscopy. With Mica, what we can do is integrate all of these into one machine by having both widefield and confocal microscopy in an environmentally controlled system. This allows us to take very quick images using widefield and then select some regions, change to confocal and be able to get those in greater detail. As a Facility Manager, I think the main challenge is how to get users from all sorts of backgrounds and levels of expertise and train them in how to use it in the right way. What Mica offers us is that we can train them very quickly, because it’s easy to use, very intuitive and you don't need to do very complex setups and configurations. So, it simplifies the process of getting somebody trained and up and running with their own experiment. You can use different techniques with the same machine: live samples, fixed samples, anything that you really need.
Sharad Patel
Biosciences Core Facilities Manager, Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London
Mica has been a game changer for us. With its dual capabilities of widefield and confocal imaging, it allows users to switch seamlessly between the techniques. It allows high end imaging for different users and different projects. What I like most about Mica is how easy it is to use. The user interface is quite simple, you just work through the workflow, and you can go from 0 to 100 of an image very quickly. Other applications that we can use with Mica, because of its environmental chamber, allow us to closely monitor complex biological systems during live imaging. These aspects all bring their own challenges, but Mica allows us to explore and study the dynamics of complex biological systems. Future applications for Mica could be studying microfluidics where we can look at perfusion and this would allow us to open imaging to a whole different range of applications. My experience with Mica was very easy, it's simple to use and it allowed us to train those who don't know much about microscopy or new users to the field – to just train anyone and everyone.
Dr. Periklis Pantazis
Director Imperial College London and Leica Microsystems Imaging Hub
One of the great achievements of having the Mica system in our Imaging Hub is that you have a much bigger user base now of people who actually would not have engaged with optical imaging before. They are excited to have Mica, which essentially guides them to perform experiments efficiently, resulting in highly effective outcomes. This means they are achieving great results they had not even dreamed of before. In the future, I foresee that, given our broad user base, there will be more applications, more disciplines, more insights, and more challenges. These will benefit from close interactions with Leica Microsystems, leading to improvements in the systems, making them more meaningful for users and getting more insights to stay at the forefront of research.
