Beyond the Scope: Building a Microscopy Network

2025 ATN Workshop attendees

Yi Zuo, PhD; Gordon Wang, PhD

Learning More About Neural Imaging

The workshop attendees, who ranged from graduate students to post-doctoral researchers, spent the week in lectures, demonstrations, and hands-on experiences at both Stanford and UCSC. They had the opportunity to become acquainted with everything from voltage imaging in the brain to super-resolution microscopy. One session, for example, featured what Dr. Wang describes as “fully implantable, two-photon microscopes in awake and behaving mice running around while the microscope is actually imaging the animal.”

“They really do get to see cutting-edge experiments being run,” he says of the attendees, adding that many of them have few or no opportunities to see these kinds of tools at work at their home institutions.

At first, Dr. Zuo says, some of the students are timid. “It’s million-dollar equipment. No one wants to mess around.” But by the end of the week, she says, most are more comfortable with the different types of microscopes and have the confidence and the vocabulary to ask questions about the techniques they are learning.

Participants agreed. “It was exactly what I needed to learn about to take my research to the next level,” one said in an exit survey.

Along the way, the students get to meet—and interact with—some of the biggest names in microscopy: people like Mark J. Schnitzer, PhD, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and professor of biology, applied physics, and neurosurgery at Stanford, who invented implantable mini scopes and ran a session at this year’s workshop.

To Drs. Wang and Zuo, these experts are colleagues and peers they’ve known for years. To the students, they are photo-worthy celebrities. “They’ve seen them by name, or they’ve seen them in textbooks, but they’ve never actually met them in person,” says Dr. Wang.

By all accounts, the attendees found this year’s workshop rewarding. “It has taught me just how many possibilities there are in microscopy,” one said in the exit survey. Others described the week as “amazing,” “wonderful,” “influential,” and “incredible.”

About 50 percent of students who apply to the program are accepted. The program targets applicants who plan to continue as teachers and researchers or, as Dr. Wang calls them, “ambassadors for the techniques.”

Stoking a Love for Science and Community

The ATN Workshop was inspired by small, intensive courses at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. Drs. Wang and Zuo were teaching assistants together at the neurobiology program at Woods Hole; both are also alumni.

Dr. Zuo says the Woods Hole course changed her life by making science and microscopy more approachable, with a “free spirit” philosophy that catered to students from multiple different disciplines. “That’s a place that taught me science is actually really fun, and we should go with our interests, not just do the homework, finish a paper, run experiments, find a grant, etc.,” she says.

Fast forward 20 years, and Dr. Zuo and Dr. Wang both have lifelong connections from teaching and learning at Woods Hole: people they can trust for collaboration, advice, and sharing. “I don’t know how many times I’ve run into people who I went to a course with in Woods Hole, who are now part of my actual research collaborations,” Dr. Wang says. Dr. Zuo adds that the ties made there often extend far beyond the laboratory; they’ve given her friendships and cohorts to share life’s ups and downs.

As Drs. Wang and Zuo intended, this year’s ATN workshop participants are forging similar connections. Several had high praise for the networking component. “I was able to connect with experts and peers, which opened up new avenues for potential collaboration,” one said in the exit survey. Students can stay connected through a WhatsApp chat set up for the workshop or communicate with each other on their own.

According to Drs. Wang and Zuo, nothing like the Woods Hole program existed on the West Coast until the ATN Workshop. They received a grant from the National Institutes of Health’s BRAIN Initiative to support annual workshops for five years. There are two years left; they hope to secure funding to keep it going.

Dr. Wang points out that programs like the ATN Workshop don’t just benefit attendees; they also provide a refreshing change of pace from the rigors of research and writing for the instructors and organizers.

“There is a naivete, and just a very attractive aspect, of working with somebody who’s just learning, and things are fresh and new; when you’ve been doing something for so long, there are times when things seem a little stale, and the ideas don’t seem to pop right,” Dr. Wang says. Seeing it through the eyes of a workshop student, he says, and remembering the first time you saw it yourself, changes that perspective.

“It helps bring that joy back. And I think that it really helps both the students and the professors. And that’s what I mean by building a community.”

For more information (media inquiries only), contact:
Naomi Love
(650) 723-7184
naomi.love@stanford.edu