Congratulations to Dr. Hemali Rathnayake (PI) and her Department of Nanoscience colleagues Tetyana Ignatova, Suzanne Ahmed, Kerui Wu, Eric Josephs, and Jianjun Wei, who have just received a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense HBCU/MI Opportunities program for the purchase of a state-of-the-art 3D super-resolution microscope for imaging of live cells.  The ZEISS Elyra 7 microscope, worth close to $800K, includes Lattice Dual Iterative Structured Illumination (SIM²) and Single Molecule Localization (SMLM) systems, and will allow the study of structural features in biological systems with a resolution down to 60 nm.

In related news, Dr. Jianjun Wei is also a co-PI in a grant (~$700K), led by Dr. Peng He (Dept. of Chemistry, NC A&T) and funded by the same DoD HBCU/MI Opportunities program mentioned above, for the acquisition of a Correlative Raman-AFM microscope.  The Oxford Instruments WITec alpha300 RA combined Raman-AFM microscope incorporates the features of a Raman microscope for powerful chemical imaging along with the key capabilities of an AFM for high-resolution nanoscale surface characterization.