RQMEM proudly helped with organizing the 2026 annual meeting of the Microscopy Society of Canada, that overlapped this year with the Microscopy Summer School. The summer school took place on May 25 and 26, 2026, followed by the Annual Meeting that took place from May 27 to May 29, 2026.
Summer School and Pre-Conference Symposia
The summer school is a good opportunity to complete skills on analytical electron microscopy, explore new techniques or explore further known ones like low voltage scanning electron microscopy ou electron energy loss spectroscopy. Stay tuned about other microscopy trainings by consulting RQMEM's ressources page.
Two parellel sessions of pre-conference symposia were organized. One symposium was organized by the student chapter of the Microscopy Society of Canada, inviting many microscopists to describe their career. The other symposium, on critical minerals, invited Colin MacRae (CSIRO Mineral Resources) and Richard Wuhrer (Western Sydeny University) to talk about rare earth ionic clays and characterization techniques for Critical Minerals and the development of instrumentation to aid in their analysis, correspondingly.
The two trainings days were crowned by visits in McGill's museams, the Redpath Museum for Natural History, the Ernest Rutherford Physics Museum, or the Maude Abbott Medical Museum.
On the left and on top, people enjoying the cocktail reception and networking at the Redpath Museum.
On the micro-, nano-, multi- scale, and more!
This year, we were pleased to be visited by many well-known invited speakers. Raful Dunin0Borkowski (Forschungszentrum Jülich) opened the conference by talking about electron holography of microstructure-property relationships in Magnetic Materials and semiconductor devices. We were also honnored to receive Wah Chiu (stanford University), Na Ji (Univerisy of California, Berkeley) and Eric Betzig (University of California, Berkeley) for plenary lectures.
Parmi nos conférenciers vedettes, James LeBeau (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) a donné une présentation sur les avancées récentes en caractérisation à l’échelle atomique de complexes fonctionnels d’oxide, Shigeo Mori (Osaka Metropolitan University) a présenté sur les observations MET in-situ de batteries solides alors que Patricia Kooyman (University of Cape Town) parlait du domaine de la catalyse.
D’autres présentateurs vedettes notables étaient Claire Brown (McGill), Ben Britton (University of British Columbia), Shery Chang (University of New South Wales), Lucy Collinson (The Fancis Crick Institute), David Cooper (University of Saskatchewan), Sarah Dallas (University of Missouri), Roland Kröger (University of York), Marc McKee (McGill), Keith Murai (McGIll), Bradley Siwick (McGill), Natalie Strynadka (University of British Columbia) et Ysmal Verde- Gómez (TECNM-Instituto Tecnológico de Cancún).
Between these lectures and the students' talks, many networking activites, including a poster session, allowed people to connect and open the door to research collaboration opportunities.
Des prix décernés par la société canadienne de microscopie
All week long, micrographs were posted for the image competition with public voting. The three favourite micrographs selected by the public received a price in the image competition : Lucrehulk by Emma Warner, The Cellular Thorn : An Arabidpopsis Trichome by Lamha Kumar and Biomineral Weave by Marc McKee.
In first place, Biomineral Weave by Marc McKee
In third place, Lucrehulk by Emma Warner
In second place, The Cellular Thorn : An Arabidpopsis Trichome by Lamha Kumar
From left to right, Marc McKee, Natalie Reznikov, Lahma Kumar and Emmar Warner
The students who presented their research during talks or the poster session were evaluated by a judge pannel and 17 prices were given!
Those who received prices : Adrien Martinez, Jared VanderZwaag, Yael Noy, Adwaith B. Uday, Dmytro Fedorenko, Lee Rowsell, Mia L. San Gabriel, Lotan Portal, Shumeng Jia, Morvarid Ghorbani, Rasool Doostkam, Laura Bohorquez, accompanied by Natalie Reznikov. Absents from the photo : Hussien Ali Ballouk Hernandez, Natalie Woo, Broderick House, Liguo Chen, and Alice Wu.
We warmly thank the sponsors, without those we would not be able to afford this many prices for the students. Many sponsors were present to meet our microscopists, and some, including Hitachi and Jeol, organized Lunch & Learns.
Évidemment, cette rencontre de la société canadienne de microscopie n’aurait pas été possible sans l’implication du comité organisateur composé de Natalie Reznikov, Raynald Gauvin, Joaquin Ortega, Kelly Sears, Lise Guichaoua, Fabiana Rotondo, Eliane Soligo et Stéphanie Bessette.
The organizing committee also thanks the student and staff volunteers :
Alexandre Demers-Potvin, Amirreza Khodaparast, Benazir Khurshid, Benjamin Rudski, Corbin Black, David Liu, Diksha Bhola, Jeannie Miu, Jesus Valdez, Johanne Ouellette, Kyeongseo Kim, Lamha Kumar, Mahdi Hosseinitabatabaei, Meysam Naghizadeh, Mickey Wong, Nicolas Brodusch, Parastoo Asadi, Patrick-Brian Bielawski, Shumeng Jia, Sogo Adegboyega, Vasily Ignatov, Vinay Ashok Kumar, Wanting He, Weawkamol leelapornpisit, Sofia Filippov, Ray Zhou, Wynne Chu.
We will see you again next year for the next annual meeting of the Microscopy Society of Canada, in Vancouver! All the information on upcoming events related to electron microscopy in Quebec will be posted on the News page.
