New £8million imaging facility for Dundee

Published On Fri 23 Jan 2015 by Roddy Isles

The Dundee Imaging Facility, a new £8million imaging unit at the University of Dundee, will be opened today, Friday January 23rd.

In the past two years over £8 million in external funding and strategic partnerships with some of the biggest names in commercial engineering has led to a fundamental shift in the way scientists at the University work and the imaging technology they have access to.

They have now been brought together in the Dundee Imaging Facility, an interdisciplinary, university-wide, advanced technology resource helping to drive the University’s objectives to develop transformational research in physical, life and medical sciences.

The Dundee Imaging Facility not only provides support for individual research projects from a broad range of disciplines - from materials research through to tissue and small organism imaging - it also creates workflows between technologies and has an active role in facilitating and supporting projects across disciplines.

Professor Jason Swedlow, academic lead on the growth and development of the Facility, said, “The opportunities for discovery based on biological microscopy are enormous, but these are perhaps equalled by the challenges in applying this rapidly evolving technology to important biological and biomedical problems.

“The new facility extends existing, proven expertise to the cutting edge and provides a vehicle for delivering this technology within a proven, sustainably-run, imaging facility that serves the scientific goals of users from Dundee, Scotland and the UK.”

Facility Director Dr Sam Swift, who has driven the integration and management of the new imaging centre, said, “The University’s objectives are to develop transformational research areas, at the interface of the physical and engineering sciences with the life and medical sciences. These offer the biggest scientific challenges of our times.

“The Dundee Imaging Facility’s ambition to provide a collaborative research space actively supporting these research goals feeds into the University of Dundee’s ‘Transformation Agenda’ to be Scotland’s leading University within the next 25 years.”

Funding for the DIF has been provided by a range of organization including the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, CR-UK and the Scottish Funding Council.

Biological Sciences research at Dundee was rated top among universities in the UK in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework. The REF is the main test of research quality carried out by higher education funding bodies.

Dundee has an international reputation for excellence in imaging and microscopy. Professor Swedlow founded the Open Microscopy Environment at Dundee, an international consortium which has revolutionised the ability of researchers and industrial partners to handle, analyse, share and interpret vast amounts of image data.

The Dundee Imaging Facility comprises:

  • Advanced Light Microscopy
  • Super resolution Imaging
  • Tissue Imaging
  • Non optical imaging
  • Electron Microscopy
  • Image Analysis and Data Processing
  • The Physics and Life Science lab
  • Sample preparation and Histology

The facility is supported by a dedicated team of hugely experienced and capable staff, with backgrounds in Physics, Chemistry and Biology and with practical experience interacting at the interface of the life and physical sciences. 

 

Roddy Isles
Head of Press
TEL: 01382 384910
MOBILE: 07800 581902
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk