Teaching at McMaster CCEM Summer School
Photo by Sam Stambula / CCEM
I had a great time in Hamilton last week serving as an instructor at the McMaster University Canadian Center for Electron Microscopy (CCEM) Summer School, where I spoke on AI for Microscopy. My thanks to Dr. Nabil Bassim and Dr. Sam Stambula for the invitation and for organizing a well-run school with an interesting lineup of speakers. It was a valuable event and good to connect with the researchers and students there.
While on campus, I also had the chance to get a tour of the Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy. They have an impressive suite of instruments that serves as a key resource for the materials community. The interactions with the students were also a highlight; their engagement with the topics and the quality of their questions during the sessions were excellent.
Events like this summer school are important for the field. Bringing researchers together to focus specifically on the role of AI in microscopy is critical for moving the science forward. We're at a point where the hardware, from the microscopes to the detectors, is incredibly powerful. The clear next step is to build the autonomous and AI-driven methods that can leverage that hardware to its full potential.
Seeing the advanced tools at CCEM firsthand just makes it clear how much opportunity there is to integrate more autonomous workflows into our experiments. It was a productive visit, and I appreciate the hospitality from the team at McMaster and the CCEM.