Lightfest! Advanced Light Microscopy Symposium at CNSI

Join us for the second annual Lightfest! Advanced Light Microscopy Symposium at CNSI. A celebration of UNESCO’s International Day of Light, this event will be held from May 15 – 17, in honor of Theodore Maiman, who fired the first laser right here in southern California on May 16th, 1960.

This symposium will feature invited talks from a selection of light microscopy users, poster presentations and awards, an image contest, and vendor booths. This event is free and open to anyone, we hope to see you there!

Lightfest attendees can register here: https://formfacade.com/public/111737165731248679447/all/form/1FAIpQLSeUa...

FULL SCHEDULE: https://cnsi.ucla.edu/lightfest-2024/schedule/

About the keynote speaker:

Opening Keynote: Adding Dimensions to Intravital Imaging to Better Eavesdrop on Biology
Scott E. Fraser, PhD
University of Southern California
Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Imaging of living specimens can animate the wealth of high-throughput molecular data to better understand complex events ranging from embryonic development to disease processes. We are advancing this approach despite the unavoidable tradeoffs – between spatial & temporal resolution, field of view, limited photon budget – by constructing faster and more efficient light sheet and laser-scanning microscopes that maintain subcellular resolution.

Our two-photon light-sheet microscope combines the deep penetration of two-photon microscopy and the speed of light sheet microscopy to generate images with more than 10x improved imaging speed & sensitivity. Better engineering of the detection objective’s point-spread-function improves this another 3-fold. Two-photon excitation light is far less scattered, permitting subcellular resolution to be maintained better than conventional light sheet microscopes, resulting in 4D (3D over time) cell and molecular imaging with sufficient speed and resolution to unambiguous trace cell lineages, movements and signals in intact systems.

To increase the 5th Dimension (# of simultaneous labels), we are refining new multispectral image analysis tools that exceed the performance of our previous work on Linear Unmixing by orders of magnitude in speed, error propagation and accuracy. Novel denoising strategies using machine learning permit imaging at far lower light levels, yielding rapid and unambiguous analyses without perturbing even fragile multiplex-labeled specimens.

Parallel refinements in label-free approaches extend imaging to patient-derived tissues and even human subjects. The low concentrations of these intrinsic labels required us to refine fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM), and combine it with multispectral and advanced denoising tools, to perform intravital imaging in such challenging settings.

Combined, these imaging and analysis tools offer the multi-dimensional imaging required to follow key events in intact systems as they take place, and allow us to use noise and variance as experimental tools rather than experimental limitations.

Schedule:
Day 1 – Wednesday May 15 – CNSI Alfred E Mann Auditorium & Lobby
1:30pm – 2:00pm Participant Registration & Check-In
2:00pm – 3:00pm Welcome & Introduction to UNESCO’s International Day of Light
3:00pm – 4:00pm Session 1: Art in Science – Session Chair Victoria Vesna (UCLA)
Daniel G. Jay (Tufts) | Chromophore assisted light inactivation, fluorescence & electrophoresis art
Walter Gekelman (UCLA) | Using lasers to map the motion of ions in a plasma physics experiment
4:00pm – 5:00pm Session 2: Keynote – Session Chair Laurent Bentolila (UCLA)
Scott E. Fraser, Ph.D. – Provost Professor, Director of Science Initiatives, USC
Adding dimensions to intravital imaging to better eavesdrop on biology
5:00pm – 5:30pm Interactive Fiat Lux installation by the Art|Sci Collective
5:30pm – 7:00pm Networking reception

Day 2 – Thursday May 16 – CNSI Alfred E Mann Family Foundation Auditorium and Lobby
9:00am – 9:30am Light breakfast and vendor showcase
9:30am – 10:45am Session 3: Navigating Neuroscience in 3D – Session Chair Esteban Fernandez (CHLA)
Ivan Lopez (UCLA) | Laser confocal imaging of sensory neurons of the human internal ear
Ranmal Samarasinghe (UCLA) | Modeling and Imaging Neural Networks using Human Brain Assembloids
Peyman Goldshani (UCLA) | New generation 1P & 2P miniaturized microscopes for in-vivo imaging during free behavior
10:45am – 11:00am Coffee break and vendor showcase
11:00am – 12:15pm Session 4: Multiphoton in the Musculoskeletal System – Session Chair Blaise Ndjamen (UCSF)
Jimmy Hu (UCLA) | Multiphoton of living craniofacial stem cells
Kristen Reider (UCLA) | Correlated two photon and atomic force microscopy for characterizing surgically extracted tissues
Tad Kremen (UCLA) | Soft tissue-to-bone healing: Defining the problem and potential solutions
12:15pm – 1:15pm Lunch break and vendor showcase
1:15pm – 2:30pm Session 5: Multimodal and Multiplexed Imaging – Session Chair Brian Jeong (UCLA)
Janielle Cuala (USC) | Multimodal imaging reveals changes in beta cell metabolism and heterogeneity over the course of pregnancy
Lior Kashani Ligumsky (UCLA) | Stop blaming the placenta: Label-free multiphoton microscopy reveals previous cesarean scars are a defining pathology of the Placenta Accreta Spectrum (PAS)
Niles A. Pierce (Caltech) | HCR imaging: multiplexed, quantitative, sensitive, versatile, robust
2:30pm – 2:45pm Coffee break and vendor showcase
2:45pm – 4:00pm Session 6: Beyond the Visible Spectrum – Session Chair Haley Marks (UCLA)
Justin Caram (UCLA) | Seeing the shortwave infrared with novel materials, detectors and interferometric methods
Ellen Sletten (UCLA) | Multiplexed in vivo imaging with near and shortwave infrared polymethine
fluorophores
Eric Potma (UCI) | Nonlinear optical imaging with mid-infrared light
4:00pm – 5:00pm Vendor showcase/poster session
5:00pm – 6:15pm Session 7: Cutting Edge Microscopy Modalities – Session Chair Laurent Bentolila (UCLA)
Enbo Zhu (UCLA) | Multi-View light-sheet imaging system with comprehensive tissue clearing compatibility and large field of view
Liang Gao (UCLA) | Breaking the speed barrier: high-speed light-field microscopy for kilohertz to terahertz 3D imaging
Aydogan Ozcan (UCLA) | Virtual Staining of Label-free Tissue Using Deep Learning
6:15pm – 7:30pm Networking Reception

Day 3 – Friday May 17 – CNSI 3rd Floor Executive Conference Rooms – Brunch & Learn – 10:00 am Vendor Slam Talks (3rd Floor Executive Conference Room)
10:00 am – 2:00 pm Vendor Demo Fair (Labs/Booths)
10:00 am – 2:00 pm
10:30 am – Evan Darling (ONI) | Blinky Blink Blink: A Short Introduction to STORM Super-Resolution
11:00 am – Jan Otto Wirth (Abberior) | MINFLUX tracking of kinesin-1 at the nanometer and millisecond scale
11:30 am – Chris Tsang (LifeCanvas Technologies) | What insights are possible if you could image in 3D
12:00 pm – Gert Vreede (Zeiss) | Lightsheet at Lightfest: Versatile 3D imaging from micro- to mesoscale
12:30 pm – Kevin Mann (Bruker) | Illuminating the Brain:
Mapping and Manipulating Neural activity in 3D
1:00 pm – Fred Sala (Leica Microsystems) | Stellaris FLIM: Rainbow of possibilities
Room 6350 | Andor (Benchtop Confocal BC43)
Lobby | LifeCanvas (SmartBatch Automated Tissue Clearing)
Lobby | Ibidi (perfusion & incubation systems)
Room 2152 | Abberior (MINFLUX & STEDyCon)
2:00 pm Closing Remarks & Awards Ceremony (Auditorium)

More info: https://cnsi.ucla.edu/event/lightfest-advanced-light-microscopy-symposiu...