In the News
NCMIR’s own Picture Wizard Tom Deerinck featured in the January issue of “The Scientist” magazine
NCMIR researcher Tom Deerinck was profiled by writer Jef Akst in the January 2015 issue of the magazine “The Scientist”. Deerinck is a completely unique individual with a novel career history of creating high works of arts from his impeccable scientific studies. The magazine profile details how he came to work when he was 20 years old under the tutelage of distinguished professor Mark Ellisman at UCSD in 1978 as well as how his passion for the scientific process and imaging on state-of-the-art microscopes endures. Read More >>
NCMIR researcher captures second place in the 11th annual Olympus BioScapes International Digital Imaging Competition
Winners of the annual Olympus BioScapes Competition were announced December 16, 2014, and NCMIR researcher Thomas Deerinck garnered second place for his triple labeled confocal fluorescence image of cerebellar Purkinje neurons in rodent brain. The competition, which is widely recognized as one of the preeminent photography competitions focusing on microscopic imaging in the life sciences, attracted over 2500 entries from 70 different countries throughout the world. Read More >>
UC San Diego and NCMIR Researcher Roger Tsien is awarded the first annual Golden Goose Award from Congress
Roger Tsien, PhD, Professor of Pharmacology at UC San Diego and Nobel laureate for Chemistry 2008, for work related to NCMIR at UC San Diego, received the Golden Goose Award in September 2012. This award “showcases researchers who pursue oddball topics that eventually lead to significant health and economic benefits, the awards were created by a coalition of science organizations (including AAAS, publisher of Science Insider) Read More >>
The Microscopy Society of America awards the Maser Award to NCMIR’s own Gina Sosinsky
At the 2012 Microscopy & Microanalysis meeting held in Phoenix this July, Gina Sosinsky, Assistant Director of NCMIR and a UCSD Professor-In-Residence in Neurosciences was awarded the Morton D. Maser Ward for Distinguished Service to the Microscopy Society of America. This major society award recognizes outstanding volunteer service to the Society. Read More >>
NCMIR at the MET
NCMIR Commissioned to Provide Artwork for the New Medical Education and Telemedicine Center at UCSD
La Jolla, CA , December 2011- Researchers from the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) have been charged with providing science-based artwork for the public areas of the new +100,000 square foot Medical Education and Telemedicine Center on the campus of the School of Medicine at UCSD. The new center will be a hub of learning that incorporates state-of-the-art design and technology to prepare medical students to become physicians and innovators of tomorrow. It will also be used for physicians to learn new skills utilizing the latest advances in medical and surgical technology, such as surgical robotics. Read More >>
Two Top Biological Imaging Centers Offer Powerful Free Online Tool to Researchers, Educators, and Public
ASCB’s The Cell: An Image Library and NCMIR’s Cell Centered Database introduce new interface to spur health discoveries and science education
BETHESDA, MD, USA, DECEMBER 1, 2011 – The collaboration of two leading cell image resource centers now provides a more extensive and advanced facility for archiving, sharing, and analyzing microscope images in great detail. The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) and the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), have joined forces to provide a unified interface. This union extends ASCB’s The Cell: An Image Library website with new capabilities and an extensible software infrastructure.
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BETHESDA, MD, USA, DECEMBER 1, 2011 – The collaboration of two leading cell image resource centers now provides a more extensive and advanced facility for archiving, sharing, and analyzing microscope images in great detail. The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) and the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), have joined forces to provide a unified interface. This union extends ASCB’s The Cell: An Image Library website with new capabilities and an extensible software infrastructure.
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Waitt Family Foundation Project Develops Whole Brain Catalog
La Jolla, CA – October 16, 2009 – At the year’s biggest international meeting of neuroscientists, researchers from the University of California, San Diego will unveil a tool that could revolutionize the way scientists and students explore and map the mysteries of the brain. Read More >>
2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Shared by UC San Diego and NCMIR Researcher Roger Tsien
University of California, San Diego Professor Roger Tsien, Ph.D., will share the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and Boston University School of Medicine, and Martin Chalfie of Columbia University in New York. Read More >>
Former NCMIR Project Scientist Awarded Society for Histochemistry's Feulgen Prize
June 2, 2008 Dr. Ben Giepmans, former NCMIR project scientist, was awarded the Society for Histochemistry's Feulgen Prize for his outstanding contributions to the development and application of new advanced fluorescent proteins and biarsenical-tetracysteine probes for light and electron microscropy.Read More >>
NCMIR Scientist Wins Title of Top Science Photographer of the Year in the World Photography Awards
April 25, 2008 CMIR scientist Thomas Deerinck captured first place in the inaugural Sony World Photography Awards in the Professional Science Photography category announced at a VIP gala ceremony at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France. Read More >>
Ellisman Gives Featured Lecture on Emerging Technologies at Society for Neuroscience 2007
November 5, 2007 Innovative efforts underway at UCSD's School of Medicine to leverage telecommunications and information technologies for accelerating biomedical research were featured during a special lecture during the 2007 annual Society for Neuroscience conference. UCSD's track record of driving the development of digital age technologies for acquiring, visualizing, and communicating research information was highlighted in a special lecture delivered by Dr. Mark Ellisman, of the University of California, San Diego. being conducted all this week at San Diego's Convention Center.Read More >>
NCMIR Researcher is Helping to Bridge Art and Science Through the Use of Dynamic Media
August 3, 2007 Ruth West, director of visual analytics and interactive technologies at NCMIR and a team of engineers, computer scientists, biologists, and artists have created interactive artwork for exploring new ways of representing nature in the era of metagenomics. Viewers can interact real-time with genetic sequences of marine microorganism on CalIT2's 100-million-pixel autosterographic display. The immersive visualization display is titled ATLAS in silico and is on display August 4-6 at UCSD's CalIT2 as part of the annual SIGGRAPH conference that features cutting-edge computer graphics and interactive technologies. Attendance at this year's conference is expected to attract 25,000 to San Diego. Read More >>
UCSD to Acquire Cutting-Edge Electron Microscope for Biomedical Research
June 12, 2007 UCSD's National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) has been awarded a large grant to assist in the purchase of a new high energy electron microscope. Today's announcement by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will afford NCMIR scientists an opportunity to explore new microscope technologies for advancing research benefiting biomedical research. UCSD's award is the only grant this year for an advanced electron microscope from NIH's High-End Instrumentation (HEI) program. Read More >>
NCMIR scientist selected to judge the annual Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition
May 2007 Nikon Instruments Inc. has announced the judging panel for the 33rd International Small World Photomicrography Competition. The panel includes Thomas Deerinck, a Research Scientist at the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research at UCSD. The other judges chosen by Nikon for this year’s competition include John Hart, an Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Professor at University of Colorado; Malcolm Ritter, AP Science Writer; Daniel Sieberg, Science & Technology correspondent for CBS News; and Nicole Dyer, Senior Editor at Popular Science. Read More >>
NCMIR-Osaka Team Among Finalists in SC06's High Performance Computing Analytics Challenge
October 16, 2006 NCMIR’s “Computational Oral and Speech Science on E-science Infrastructure” team will face off against other finalists in the SC06 High Performance Computing (HPC) Analytics Challenge, during a special session of the annual Super Computing Conference on November 14th. SC06 is the premier international conference on high performance computing, networking and storage. SC06 will be held November 11-17, 2006, in Tampa, Florida. Read More >>
NCMIR scientist wins first place in the 2006 Olympus BioScapes International Digital Imaging Competition
A strikingly colorful light microscopic image of mouse retina has earned first place for NCMIR scientist Thomas Deerinck in the 2006 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition. The quadruple-fluorescence confocal image, taken as part of a study on neurofibromatosis, shows the highly complex organization of some of the different cell types present in the retina. Read More >>
NCMIR, NBCR, CalIT2, and EVL demonstrate integrated environment for the development of multiscale, multimodal, multi-site science at SC06
November 2006 Collaborators from the National Biomedical Computation Resource (NBCR), the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CalIT2), the University of Illinois' Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), and NCMIR demonstrate how researchers at multiple locations can take advantage of advanced networks, software, and computational resources to extend the capabilities of bioscience instrumentation and informatics at the 2006 Super Computing Conference.Read More >>
NCMIR-Osaka Team Among Finalists in SC06's High Performance Computing Analytics Challenge
November 1, 2006 Kazunori Nozaki and Susumu Date, of Osaka's Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, and colleagues from Japan and NCMIR will face off against other finalists in the SC06 High Performance Computing (HPC) Analytics Challenge, during a special session of the annual Super Computing (SC) Conference on November 14th. The premier international conference on high performance computing, networking and storage, SC06 will be held November 11-17, 2006, in Tampa, Florida.Read More >>
Ellisman presents NCMIR research to Japanese Royals
September 2006 At the invitation of Japan’s Emperor Akihito, Mark Ellisman presented an overview of NCMIR’s research on multi-scale imaging and multi-scale modeling of the nervous system. Ellisman presented a multimedia poster and summarized research advances made possible by an alliance of leading researchers in biology and brain research, as well as advanced computing technologies.Read More >>
Bright future — Rapid advances in fluorescent tools promise to illuminate the details of protein expression, activity, and function
April 14, 2006 An interdisciplinary team of biological imaging experts from the University of California San Diego (National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, Pharmacology Dept., Chemistry and Biochemistry Dept., and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute) recently contrasted the characteristic benefits and limitations of many new classes of fluorescent probes for studying proteins. Sharing the perspective that major advances in the life sciences are strongly tied to the ability to directly observe dynamic processes in living systems, and to localize the responsible molecular machinery in situ by electron microscopy, they published a review of relevant fluorescent imaging technologies in the 14-April-2006 issue of Science. Read More >>
Studies of mouse models of human disease helped by NCMIR's large-scale imaging expertise
February 2006 Scientists studying the nervous system have long struggled to understand how higher order structures, such as cellular networks, are assembled out of finer building blocks, such as dendritic and axonal architectures. Mapping the entire neural structure is the key to elucidating brain function. In a forthcoming issue of Neuroinformatics, a team of NCMIR researchers report on their progress towards this central goal by describing new procedures to study brain architecture and to characterize pathological changes in transgenic mice, spanning millimeter- to nanometer-sized structures.Read More >>
IBM's online series highlights NCMIR's Telescience technologies
February 2006 When IBM seeks an authority on Grid-computing, they look to UCSD researchers. NCMIR's Abel Lin has authored a tutorial, "Building a Unified Grid" for IBM's authoritative online reference, DeveloperWorks. In this multi-part series, Lin details how Telescience's Grid-based system architecture for science, developed at NCMIR over the past 20 years, is helping to blaze trails for Grid-developers outside of the ivory tower. Read More >>
NCMIR researcher wins second and eighth place in the Nikon International Small World Competition.
October 2005 Nikon Corp has announced the winners of the 2005 Nikon International Small World Competition. Local NCMIR scientist Tom Deerinck garnered a second and an eighth place in the prestigious competition with his images of tissues stained with fluorescent quantum dots. Read More >>
Science Features Collaborative Study Between NCMIR and Salk Institute
July 2005 In a collaboration between computational neuroscientists and neuroanatomists, researchers have created a 3-D, nano-scale “anatomically correct” neuronal synapse that provides new insights into the way synapses work. Scientists combined biology, high-voltage electron microscopy, and computer modeling to view ectopic neurotransmission. Read More >>
Science Highlights CCDB in "NetWatch"
March 2005 March 2005 — The Cell Centered Database (CCDB) was featured in the journal Science's "NetWatch" column, which named the site as a novel way of making microscopic imaging data available to the science community. The article, which appeared in the March 25 issue, highlighted the CCDB's multidisciplinary appeal, as it benefits a broad range of scientists from "anatomists charting the nuances of neuron branching to modelers hoping to devise more realistic cell simulations." The CCDB is open to any researcher who wishes to contribute data. Read More >>
NCMIR Featured in Bio-IT World
December 2004 NCMIR’s “BioWall,” a newly designed 20-tile wall of high-resolution flat-panel displays that project massive, detailed 2D and 3D images of the brain, was featured in Bio-IT World this month.Read More >>
Rat Cerebellum Image Wins Light Microscopy Award
November 2004 NCMIR microscopist Thomas Deerinck's image of a rat cerebellum won fifth place in the Olympus Bioscapes International Digital Imaging Competition. The image, a photomicrograph of a section of rat cerebellum, was achieved using Quantum Dot technology and multiphoton microscopy.Read More >>
NCMIR, BioWall Featured in The Scientist, San Diego Union-Tribune, and TechTarget
NCMIR's newly constructed BioWall tiled display, a 20-tile wall of flat-panel displays that project massive, detailed 2D and 3D images of the brain, has been featured in a variety of publications in recent months. Read More >>
Undergrads Explore NCMIR Cyberinfrastructure in Japan
August 2004 As part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) project that prepares engineering students for the global workforce, two UCSD undergraduates are spending their summer enhancing NCMIR's cyberinfrastructure at Japan 's Osaka University. Stephen Geist and Ramsin Khoshabeh, under the tutelage of NCMIR's Mark Ellisman, Steven Peltier, and Tomas Molina, are exploring NCMIR's Telescience in collaboration with researchers from the Cybermedia Center at Osaka University.Read More >>
NCMIR Represented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2004
August 2, 2004 Savannah , GA — The annual Microscopy and Microanalysis conference featured NCMIR researchers demonstrating advances in imaging techniques. Dr. Diana L. Price's poster presentation, titled "Application of a Multi-Photon High-Resolution Large-Scale Montage Imaging Technique to Characterize Transgenic Mouse Models of Human Neurodisorders," won this year's M&M Traveling Poster Award. The study revealed neuropathology in the hippocampus and cerebellum of the Parkinsonian mouse brain, two areas often overlooked in Parkinson's disease research.Read More >>
U.S. and Korean Research Institutions Link Laboratories to Advance Microscopy and Information Technologies
>May 2003 Korean delegates from the Korean Basic Sciences Institute (KBSI) joined UCSD Chancellor Robert Dynes and NCMIR Director Mark Ellisman to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) promoting international cooperation in information technology, advanced analytical imaging, and biomedical research. This July, that understanding will become accomplishment as NCMIR begins testing the boundaries of its Telescience; technologies on Korea's new 1.25 MeV ultra high-voltage electron microscope.Read More >>
Telescience Enlisted in Fight Against SARS
July 2003 Taiwan — Since February, more than 8000 cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and 600 deaths have been reported to the World Health Organization. When researchers from Taiwan, one of the hardest hit regions, began looking for ways to help combat the spread of the virus, they recognized the potential value of Telescience technologies developed by UCSD affiliates, and contacted NCMIR for help. Read More >>
Telescience Recognized for Facilitating Biomedical Research on a Global Network
Telescience participants at Supercomputing 2003 demonstrated remote microscope manipulation, high bandwidth over the next generation Internet protocol (IPv6), and Web portal options for collaborative international research. Telescience won "Best Application" during the annual Bandwidth Challenge. Read More >>Argentinian Researchers Use Telescience to Study Microscopic Biological Structures
August 2004 To help understand the effects of oxygen deprivation on brain synapses in infants, a researcher from Argentina plans to use electron microscopy and tomography tools offered by NCMIR's Telescience.Read More >>
Telescience and BIRN Cited in Wired Magazine
April 2004 Wired magazine's April 2004 issue named NCMIR's Telescience Project and the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) as successful models of grid computing. The article speculates that grids like Telescience and BIRN may one day find application for everyday uses.Read More >>
