On 19 November 2019, scientists from facilities across the world gathered at the IGBMC in Strasbourg (Instruct Centre France 1) for the annual Instruct Workshop for Best Practice in CryoEM. The two-day workshop, which receives funding from the Instruct-ULTRA project, is now in its third year, following the success and popularity of previous workshops in Harwell (Oxfordshire, UK) in May 2017 and NeCEN (Leiden, Netherlands) in October 2018.
The Instruct Workshop for Best Practice in CryoEM was established as a forum for the exchange of knowledge and experience between EM facility scientists, managers and computational experts in academia and industry. The workshops enable sharing of best practice in the delivery of cryoEM services and help to identify common issues and solutions in service provision. The workshops also encourage interaction between scientists and instrument manufacturers, in order to direct developments in training and technology for cryoEM. At the 3rd Best Practice Workshop, experts from leading cryoEM facilities gave presentations under the themes of sample preparation, on the fly processing/data collection strategies, and cryo-electron tomography/FIB (view the full programme here). The workshop also included a breakout session, which facilitated productive discussions on the topic of software workflows and data management and storage. The participants expressed their enjoyment of the workshop, in particular the ‘nice talks and exchanges’.
Group photo from the 3rd Instruct Workshop for Best Practice in CryoEM, hosted at Instruct Centre FR1.
It was also announced that the 4th Instruct Workshop for Best Practice in CryoEM will be hosted at the Astbury Biostructure Laboratory at the University of Leeds (Instruct Centre UK) in 2020. Keep an eye on the Instruct-ERIC Training Programme for more information about the 4th Best Practice in CryoEM workshop and other Instruct training courses coming up in 2020.