Microscopy Summer School 2026

Published on July 16, 2026

The microscopy summer school took place on May 25 and 26, 2026, in McGill, just before the annual meeting of the microscopy society of Canada. Approximately a hundred of students and professionals were there. We covered themes from basic microscopy techniques to specialized approaches, allowing participants that are new to these methods as well as more experienced users to find content for their needs.

Summer School : Accessible trainings in various fields of microscopy

The first day was devoted to theoretical courses covering various levels of expertis. Introductory training sessions allowed participants who are new to microscopy techniques to learn more about the fundamental principles of scanning electron microscopy coupled with EDS (with Raynald Gauvin) or EDS-coupled transmission electron microscopy (with Nadi Braidy). Anthony Smith also taught an introductory course on X-ray microscopy. More specialized lectures covered recent developments such as 4D scanning transmission electron microscopy and FIB-SEM systems (with Lothar Houben and Philippe Plamondon, respectively).

Some comments from Benjamin Rudski, student

« This May, I was honoured to participate in the Microscopy Society of Canada summer school. This summer school was very accessible, enabling attendees in a variety of fields to learn from the content that was presented.

As someone who analyses micro-computed tomography (µCT) volumes for my research, the summer school provided a great opportunity to step outside of my typical niche and learn about fluorescence microscopy techniques, including confocal and super-resolution approaches. These lectures, delivered by Dr. Joel Ryan and Dr. Tali Dadosh, were very thought-provoking and inspiring. I was pleased with the new knowledge I took away from these talks; even if the content was not directly applicable to my current work, it helped answer some questions I had and it may be of use later in my academic career.

In addition to these talks on scientific tools and techniques, I very much enjoyed the sessions on scientific soft skills. Through the lecture on image data and metadata management, delivered by Dr. Claire Brown, I learned about tools for keeping track of large imaging datasets, such as Omero. Moving forward, I’m hoping to implement these approaches to help organise and categorise the datasets that I use in my own research.

Similarly, the lectures on preparing scientific figures, delivered by Dr. Youssef Chebli, Dr. James Weaver and Elvis Branchini, will certainly benefit my work. In the few weeks since the conference, these two lectures have helped me think more about how to arrange and present my results in a clear and meaningful way without overwhelming readers and audience members.»

Shumeng Jia gave a traning on life hacks and troubleshooting for X-ray microscopy. The main message there was that an X Ray microscope is just like a camera, and like any other camera, it faithfully records the sample as well as its artefacts. "Therefore it is important to stay vigilant about the images we collect, remain skeptical during image processing, and not take manufacturer recommendations or default workflows for granted."

The second day of the microscopy summer school was for workshops in smaller groups, for an interactive learning experience, allowing participants to touch the tools and ask questions directly to the specialists.

The Ultramicrotomy Workshop, organized in collaboration with Edge Scientific, gave a complete introduction tot he ultramicrotomy process, from the sample preparation to obtaining ultrafine cuts. The participants uncovered good habits improving the quality of images and how to recognize the most popular artefacts. Specialized approaches for the preparation of polymeric or other soft materials were also covered.

Two time slots were available for a workshop on image processing with Dragonfly. Participants were able to explore the main features of the Dragonfly software through guided hands-on exercises using a cloud-based library of 3D images. The workshops covered topics such as image processing, segmentation, 3D visualization, and the basics of AI-assisted analysis, offering a practical introduction to these tools.

One of the student volunteers, Benjamin Rudski, is an experienced user of Dragonfly 3D World and therefore assisted Jana El Bsat, a software specialist at Comet Technologies Canada, in leading the workshop. He particularly appreciated the participants’ engagement during the workshop and commented, " I would have enjoyed participating in such a workshop when I was learning Dragonfly nearly five years ago. It was a pleasure to help out, and in the process I learned some new features of Dragonfly that I’m hoping to apply in my future image analysis work."

L'École de Technologie Supérieure hosted a workshop entitled X-ray Tomography Comet YXion, Shape Memory Alloys and Intelligent System Laboratory. Durig this laboratoy, two high-resolution X-ray CT systems were introduced. This workshop brought part inspection, process control enabled by AI-driven segmentation, and quantitative analysis algorithms.

This summer school combined introduction trainings, state-of-the-art presentations and practical workshop is smaller group, allowing participants to develop their electron microscopy competence, whater their level or main field. We can't wait to see you again at the next summer school, in 2027 in Sherbrooke.

Photo credits : Owen Egan and Joni Dufour