Light Microscopy
Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences at University of Copenhagen
This course is free of charge for PhD students at Danish universities (except Copenhagen Business School), and for PhD Students from NorDoc member faculties. All other participants must pay the course fee.
Anyone can apply for the course, but if you are not a PhD student at a Danish university, you will be placed on the waiting list until enrollment deadline. This also applies to PhD students from NorDoc member faculties. After the enrollment deadline, available seats will be allocated to applicants on the waiting list.
Learning objectives
A student who has met the objectives of the course will be able to:
1. Understand the principles of light Microscopy
2. How to set up a microscope
3. How to use fluorescence microscopy
4. How to use a Confocal microscope
5. Advance fluorescense microscopy
Content
This course in Light Microscopy follows the series of successful courses in Light Microscopy, Confocal and Fluorescence Microscopy and Electron Microscopy. This course consists of two modules and is suitable not only for beginners in microscopy, but also for those who already use the microscope in their work and now want to extend their knowledge of basic principles and more specialized techniques. The course is run in collaboration with The Royal Microscopical Society.
Module 1 (first week) provides an essential grounding in the basic principles of microscopy, including: the limitations of the eye; resolution, contrast and magnification; refraction; lenses and images; conjugate planes; methods of illumination; diffraction, aperture and resolution; generation of contrast; introduction to bright-field, dark ground, phase contrast, polarised light, differential interference contrast and fluorescence; principles of image recording. The module also covers the basic principles of electron microscopy.
Module 2 (second week) covers the characteristics and alignment of the fluorescence and confocal microscopes; the selection of fluorophores and corresponding filter sets; immunofluorescent and fluorescent affinity staining of biological specimens. Consideration will also be given to the use of cooled-CCD cameras. The principles of FRET and FLAP will be covered and demonstrated in practice. In addition, methods for producing images representing two- and three-dimensional data sets from computer-based data sets and deconvolution techniques will be described and demonstrated in practice. CFIM (www.cfim.ku.dk) will furnish state-of-the-art fluorescence and personal confocal microscopes to give students an opportunity to get hands-on experience.
Participants
PhD students who use light microscopes
Relevance to graduate programmes
The course is relevant to PhD students from the following graduate programmes at the Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences, UCPH:
All graduate programmes
Language
English
Form
Lectures, exercises
Course director
Clara Prats Gavalda, Associate Professor, MD, PhD; CFIM; cprats@sund.ku.dk
Teachers
Andrew Scott (University of Leeds, UK), Christoffer Lagerholm (Åbo Akademi University, Finland), Clara Prats Gavalda (CFIM), Thomas Braunstein (CFIM), Jana Harizanova (CFIM), Sunny Dai (CFIM), Ágata Silvan Alcaraz (CFIM), Katharina Kaiser (CFIM).
Dates
January 13-17 and January 27-31, 2025.
Course location
Panum
Blegdamsvej 3
2200 Copenhagen N
Registration
Please register before December 9, 2024
Expected frequency
Yearly in January and August
Seats to PhD students from other Danish universities will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis and according to the applicable rules.
Applications from other participants will be considered after the last day of enrolment.
Note: All applicants are asked to submit invoice details in case of no-show, late cancellation or obligation to pay the course fee (typically non-PhD students). If you are a PhD student, your participation in the course must be in agreement with your principal supervisor.