Stanford Scientists Enjoy a Growing Network of State-of-the-Art Imaging Technologies
By Sarah Williams | The Beckman Center News / Fall 2022
The Beckman Center supports discovery and innovation through diverse programs, including seminars, symposia, grants, and more.
Imaging is a mainstay of nearly every branch of biomedical research; it lets scientists visualize what they can’t see with the naked eye—the minutiae of life. Molecular biologists use microscopy to track the locations of their favorite proteins; cell biologists watch membranes merge and fuse, while a neuroscientist might follow the branches of an axon.
At the Beckman Center, the Cell Sciences Imaging Facility (CSIF) provides researchers with state-of-the-art technologies for imaging and analyzing cells, tissues, and bioengineered materials.
The Beckman CSIF, however, is just one part of a large network of imaging facilities across the Stanford University campus that offer a spectrum of equipment, technologies, and expertise.
Indeed, researchers at Stanford University have access to an extraordinary and growing network of imaging facilities and advanced technologies. In 2014, the Beckman CSIF, in collaboration with Stanford’s School of Engineering, launched a satellite light microscopy facility in the Shriram Center for Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering. In 2020, the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute opened their new building, which houses—in addition to many labs and meeting spaces—the Neuroscience Microscopy Service. And this fall, the new Stanford Center for High-Throughput, Quantitative Biology (SciQube) opened a new imaging center with a focus on custom-built, high-throughput imaging instrumentation.
“Different research buildings around Stanford have different local needs,” says Jon Mulholland, director of the Beckman CSIF. “We try not to compete with each other, but instead to collaborate and collectively improve imaging services across campus.”
Mulholland adds that the directors of each imaging center will refer researchers to other facilities if they can’t offer the best service locally. And the directors meet regularly to coordinate. The imaging directors also collaborate on education; this year they’re working together to teach MCP 222, a graduate-level light microscopy course.
“We don’t have any hard and fast boundaries over who does what,” says Mulholland. “It’s more that we check in to make sure we’re effectively filling different niches that our researchers need.”
So what does each facility offer and who is in charge? Here’s a brief rundown—for more details, reach out to each center; their staff members love to chat about imaging and how to meet your needs.
Seminars and Symposia
The Beckman Center hosts a wide variety of seminars and symposia within our own doors, and through our service centers; we also financially support other seminar series throughout the Stanford University School of Medicine. Each seminar series, by bringing together scientists from diverse fields to learn from each other and collaborate, helps further the Beckman Center goal of spurring cutting-edge, campus-wide research projects that span disciplines.
Some of these Beckman-supported series cover broad swathes of science, such as the Cancer and Tumor Biology Seminar Series, which presents a variety of research areas related to human cancers. Other are more focused, like the Frontiers in Integrative Microbial Biology Series and the Regenerative Medicine Seminar Series.
Seed Grants for Technology Development
The Beckman Center provides a number of $200,000, two-year Technology Development Seed Grants to multidisciplinary pairs of investigators who propose risky, but potentially high-payoff experiments in technological innovation in the biomedical sciences. The winning projects often emphasize the interface between basic science and clinical medicine, helping to push new biological research findings and technologies to have direct therapeutic and diagnostic applications. In 2021, a total of five teams of investigators won funding through these seed grants.
Medical Scholars
Each year, through the Beckman Center Medical Scholars Program, we support a handful of medical students who are carrying out biomedical research at Stanford. Since one of our goals at the Beckman Center is to ensure that basic science is translated for clinical use, involving medical students—future clinicians—in the research process early in their careers is critical. Medical students who are selected receive financial stipends and, at the end of their projects, present their results at an annual symposium.
Faculty Start-Up Funds
Bringing the most outstanding researchers to the Stanford community helps guarantee that we continue to have fresh ideas, technologies, and approaches for research.
Through our Faculty Recruitment Program, the Beckman Center supports the recruitment of new researchers whose collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches and emphasis on translational research are particularly well suited to the overall mission of the Beckman Center. We provide selected faculty members with financial assistance in setting up their new laboratories at Stanford and getting their research moving. More than 60 faculty members have received this support as part of their recruitment to our community.
To learn more about these and other programs, please visit our Programs page.
For more information (media inquiries only), contact:
Naomi Love
(650) 723-8423
naomi.love@stanford.edu
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