The purpose of the NorMIC series of workshops is to teach biological researchers (PhD students, engineers, postdocs and young PIs) the principles of biological microscopes and image processing. Bioimaging is a growing scientific field and has become a popular tool for investigating various biomedicine questions. This is also reflected in the growing demand each year for the places on the workshop.

This year we had significantly more applicants than we could physically host and we had to reject some applicants, workshop organiser Xian Hu explains.  

There were around 34 students from universities around Norway and Sweden and the organisers prioritised PHD students and applicants with on-going projects. 

This year also more local researchers were invited to participate in the teaching including Anna Lång from the Oslo University Hospital and NCMM Associate Investigator Rune Enger, from Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, UiO.  As well as being a teaching workshop, The NorMIC workshops continue to function as social networking events for the local imaging community. 

The workshop received financial support from Digital Life Norway ,UiO:Life Sciences, and BNMI (NordForsk Research Infrastructure Hubs). With the success of this autumn's workshop  and the ever-growing demand from early career biological researchers for this type of learning, we can look forward to the next NorMIC workshop in the spring 2023 again.

–  Our main funding agency, Digital Life Norway, was very delighted with our performance and has decided to continue to fund our workshop next year, Xian Hu comments.