The Microscopy Centre coordinates and provides logistic services to the large research infrastructures Czech-BioImaging and Euro-BioImaging. The Centre mainly serves as the central hub of the Czech-BioImaging infrastructure and as the coordinator of the Prague Node of the Euro-BioImaging ERIC consortium.
With the affiliated microscopy facilities, the Centre offers users “open access” to a wide range of state-of-the-art light and electron microscopy instruments and techniques, consultation services, sample preparation, data acquisition and analysis, image processing tools, and interpretation of the obtained results.
The Centre with the light microscopy and electron microscopy facilities organize training workshops in the field of microscopy. The Centre cooperates on a long-term basis with other members of national microscopy activities; the Czechoslovak Microscopy Society and microscope manufacturers with the focus on new microscopy methods and innovation of the current microscopy instruments.
Czech-BioImaging
The Microscopy Centre coordinates the Czech-BioImaging infrastructure (CzBI). CzBI is a national research infrastructure for biological and medical imaging. The infrastructure is currently supported by several projects provided by the Ministry of of Education, Youth, and Sports. These projects are „National Infrastructure for Biological and Medical Imaging (Czech-BioImaging)“ LM2015062 (2016 – 2019) and LM2018129 (2020 – 2022).
The Centre operates the hub of the CzBI infrastructure and functions as the secretariat of the CzBI steering and advisory bodies, it maintains the CzBI website and database, and coordinates all CzBI activities, e.g. user access, training, joint projects.
Prague Node of Euro-BioImaging ERIC
The Microscopy Centre coordinates the participation of the Czech Republic in the pan-European research infrastructure project Euro-BioImaging ERIC (EuBI), which provides the access to the top-level imaging technologies, offers professional assistance, organizes training, and helps the users with the biological and biomedical imaging data management. Furthermore, the Centre represents EuBI in the Horizon 2020 project “Research Infrastructures Training Programme (RItrain)”.
The Centre also functions as the EuBI Node “Prague Node”, which composes of the imaging facilities of the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Physiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Experimental Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and BIOCEV of Charles University in Prague .
The Microscopy Centre is supported from the project LM2015062.