Proud to be part of the IMPRESS project

Euro-BioImaging is proud to be part of the IMPRESS (Interoperable electron Microscopy Platform for advanced RESearch and Services) project, which kicks off this week in Trieste. The Horizon Europe-funded IMPRESS project addresses a major evolution in transmission electron microscopy (TEM) from a laboratory technique to a broad-impact advanced analytical method that is capable of unprecedented integrated experiments and user-driven innovation. We are very excited to work towards this revolution together with 19 project partners from the Electron Microscopy (EM), material science, research infrastructure and industry communities. The developments brought forward in this project will greatly benefit all of the Euro-BioImaging Nodes offering EM services, through training and Open Science toolboxes. Stay tuned for more developments!

Read the project press release.

Objectives

IMPRESS will overcome the limitations imposed by state-of-the-art TEM column and component manufacturers by developing a new concept for TEM instrumentation that will be based on a standardized cartridge-based platform hosting new experiments that are currently not feasible on commercial instruments, inspired by open science principles.

IMPRESS also involves the development of new electron sources with enhanced beam properties and electron-optical performance, new electron-optical elements and electron detectors for advanced imaging and spectroscopy and new sample environments for in situ/operando experiments with multiple stimuli, as well as new simulation capabilities

and automation of experiments that exploit artificial intelligence (AI) approaches. By the end of the project, these developments will be integrated with the new cartridge-based platform, in order to make them widely available to all users of RIs and all other owners of TEMs.

The new technical developments achieved in IMPRESS will be demonstrated through a number of use cases, include a bioimaging use case led by the Euro-BioImaging AMMI Maastricht Node.

Who’s involved

The IMPRESS consortium is made up of 19 partners and 5 associate partners, and is coordinated by CNR and FZJ. The core of the consortium is composed of the members of e-DREAM, which bring in their respective expertise in TEM, technology development and applications, focussed in the material sciences community. 5 RI of European interest are key partners in the consortium. These are the synchrotrons SOLEIL and ALBA, as well as 3 ERICs - Euro-BioImaging, CERIC, and ELI. The five RIs are participating in the project both as co-developers of the solutions and as end-users. They will bring to the consortium, use cases, facilities, skills and expertise complementary to those of electron microscopy, thus enabling the development of solutions interoperable with various techniques and useful to their different user communities This is particularly the case in WP5, which aims to elaborate use cases for the technologies deployment, building on synergies between RIs and their nodes or closest collaborators.

Map showing the geographic coverage of the IMPRESS consortium. The beneficiaries cover 11 countries and the ERICs have nodes in a further 8 countries. For example, Euro-BioImaging has a significant number of nodes in central and eastern European countries, including 8 nodes in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia and Bulgaria. Many of them are specialised in TEM.

Euro-BioImaging’s role

With a significant proportion of our Nodes offering Electron Microscopy services, Euro-BioImaging brings broad EM service expertise – including e.g. cryo-ET, freeze-fracturing, Tokuyasu-EM, volumeEM (FIB-SEM, SBF, Array tomography), CLEM, CXEM, as well as a large community of early adopters of the technology developments this project will drive forward. Our involvement in the project includes dissemination of project developments to the biological imaging community. We will drive training on project developments for technical staff at Euro-BioImaging Nodes in the EM field. And we will provide support for the bioimaging use case via the University of Maastricht - AMMI Node of Euro-BioImaging, ensuring that technology developments are useful for and adopted by the bioimaging community.