The UK’s Light Microscopy Core Facilities staff meeting kicks off 2025

The UK Light Microscopy Facility meeting, organised by the RMS and a local host, is always a bright way to start the year in the first week of January with a great exchange on all the ins and outs of running a microscopy facility. The 2025 edition of the meeting was hosted by the Wolfson Bioimaging Facility at the University of Bristol and took place on January 6th and 7th, 2025. Johanna Bischof represented Euro-BioImaging at this meeting and shares her perspective here.

The UK LM Facility meeting is shaped around the interests and needs of facility managers and staff, bringing them together with industry partners and representatives from the national funding councils of UKRI. 

The meeting provides the space for facilities to introduce themselves in the very popular Crib Talks section, and exchange on topics of shared interest. Particular highlights were presentations on the instrument life-cycle and sunsetting technologies in facilities, demo-ing new instruments in facilities, data management, financial and business models for facilities. 

The importance of advocating for your imaging facilities with institutional leadership and how to do so - was highlighted and much discussed during the meeting. The impact such advocacy can have is becoming clear across these events every year when it comes to the recognition of Technical Staff in facilities and their expertise.

Through activities such as the Technician commitment and the Technology Specialists Network, the UK is an international leader in advancing the recognition and promoting career paths for technical specialists, such as Imaging Scientists in Core Facilities. The impact of the continuous advocacy of the community is obvious from the perspective of the funders, which was highlighted at the meeting. More and more funders encourage technican-led applications for their large instrument funding schemes and reported that technician-led proposals have higher success rates o than those led by research PIs. A panel discussion on the technical career path that has been implemented at multiple UK universities allowed facility staff members sharing their experience with the process. 

The regular “State of the Nation” session presented an opportunity for updates from the RMS, BioImagingUK, Euro-BioImaging, and Global BioImaging. The various training, mentoring, and support opportunities for imaging facility staff provided across the different networks and infrastructures, and Global BioImaging’s advocacy work for Imaging Scientist Career Paths, matched well with the meetings focus on core facility staff and their skills and concerns.

The community will continue to actively support each other and grow connections and increase impact between now and the 2026 meeting in Newcastle.