Wednesday, October 29 | 8:30 AM - 1:30 PM
Wednesday, October 29 | 1:30 PM – 5:00 PM
Thursday, October 30 | 9:00 AM – 5:30 PM
Watch our Tech Talks to learn more about the Helios 5 UC FIB-SEM and the Hydra Plasma FIB-SEM
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Helios Hydra Plasma FIB |
Helios 5 UC Ga-FIB |
| Location: Ford Hive Building; Room #2350 | |
| 8:30 - 9:00 AM | Registration & Light Breakfast |
| 9:00 - 9:10 AM | Opening Remarks Paul Smeets, EPIC-FIB Facility Manager, NUANCE Center |
Research Talks |
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| 9:10 – 9:50 AM | Jotham Austin, II, The University of Chicago Cutting Windows into Cells: FIB Milling and CLEM for Cryo-ET |
| 9:50 - 10:30 AM | Phillip Heck, Field Museum Flight Recorders from the Dawn of the Solar System: Exploring Origins with Refractory Minerals |
| 10:30 - 10:50 AM | Coffee Break |
| 10:50– 11:30 AM | Akshay Murthy, Fermi Lab (QIS) Uncovering Atomic Scale Decoherence Mechanisms in Superconducting Qubits through Systematic Sample Preparation |
Application Talks |
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| 11:30 AM - 12:00 PM | Ken Wu, Thermo Fisher Scientific Impact of Ion Source Choice on FIB Applications: Gallium vs. Multi-Ion Plasma Source |
| 12:00 - 12:30 PM | Seth Villarreal, Leica The Hub and Spoke Workflows of the VCT500 |
| 12:30 – 1:30 PM | Lunch |
Demos (see location info below) |
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| 1:30 - 5:00 PM | Live Demos on PFIB and Ga-FIB Introductory Instrument Demo Location: Tech Institute; AB-Wing AG97 & AG98 |
| 1:30 - 4:30 PM | Avizo 3D Visualization Software Presentation followed by Live Hands-on Workshop Arsalan Zolfaghari, PhD, Thermo Fisher Scientific Exploring the Cutting Edge: Deep Learning and Automation in Avizo Software for Image Analysis Location: NUFAB conference Room, Tech Institute, FG70 |
| 9:00 AM - 5:30 PM | Live Demos on PFIB and Ga-FIB User-specific Demos (no lunch included) Location: Tech Institute; AB-Wing AG97 & AG98 |
| 9:00 AM - 5:30 PM | Avizo team assistance & consultation Location: NUFAB conference Room, Tech Institute, FG70 |
Jotham R. Austin, II, Ph.D. is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology and Director of the Advanced Electron Microscopy Facility at the University of Chicago. Trained at Arizona State University and the University of Colorado–Boulder, he has built a career advancing methods in electron microscopy, from high-pressure freezing to 3D electron tomography.
Since 2005, he has led the development of vEM, cryo-SPA, and cryo-ET, at UChicago, guiding researchers in visualizing cellular architecture across resolution scales. Beyond the lab, Jotham is also an author and science communicator, blending his expertise in imaging with storytelling through fiction and his podcast, Rabbit Hole of Research.
Philipp R. Heck serves as the Senior Director of Research at the Field Museum, where research spans Earth and Planetary Sciences, Life Sciences, Anthropology, and Archaeology. He is also Curator of Meteorites and Terrestrial Geology at the Field Museum and a part-time Professor at the University of Chicago.
Heck’s research focuses on presolar stardust grains, as well as on early Solar System materials, asteroids, the Moon, and the delivery of extraterrestrial matter to Earth. He is a member of the sample analysis teams for NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample return mission and previously for NASA’s Stardust mission. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from ETH Zurich and completed postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the University of Chicago. He is a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society.
Akshay Murthy is an associate scientist and group leader at Fermilab. As part of the Superconducting Materials and Systems (SQMS) center, he serves as the deputy center director and leader for the materials focus area. Akshay received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Northwestern University in 2020 and joined Fermilab as a postdoctoral research associate in 2021.
Akshay’s research group applies advanced materials characterization to improve superconducting and spin qubits, as well as superconducting resonators, focusing on identifying defects, impurities, interfaces, and surfaces that contribute to two-level systems (TLS) or non-TLS dissipation. Additionally, strategies are implemented to mitigate the deleterious effects introduced by these sources of quantum decoherence.
Ken Wu is the Senior Product Specialist for SEM/SDB at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Previously, Ken served as an application scientist in the North American application team for eight years, supporting a wide range of applications. In recent years, Ken has focused on TEM lamella preparation using various ion source technology, 3D characterization, and Cryo FIB. He earned his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Lehigh University, where he studied the effects of dopants and interfacial chemistry to enhance the oxidation resistance of high-temperature alloys.
Seth Villarreal is an Advanced Workflow Specialist in the nanotechnology products of Leica Microsystems, for electron microscopy workflows associated with room temperature and cryo-workflows. Seth provides hands-on and virtual training in assisting the preparation of samples for research involving electron microscopy. He graduated from Case Western Reserve University, with work on single particle cryoTEM research in the areas of DNA repair and circadian rhythm, and then a subsequent fellowship at NINDS of the NIH to study vesicle fusion by TEM from primary cell culture.
Arsalan has been a supervisor for the product application specialist team at Thermo Fisher Scientific for 2 years. He has a background in Chemical and Petroleum Engineering. Arsalan has been doing image processing and image based-modeling for more than 15 years. His expertise includes:
Micro-CT and FIB-SEM image acquisition, Image acquisition and analysis of a wide range of samples (both in material and life science fields), Multiphase Flow in porous media (modeling and experimental), Multi-scale modeling in porous materials, Machine Learning application for predicting Petrophysical Properties, Thermodynamics, and Chemical Reaction Engineering.
