Waitt Advanced Biophotonics, Zeiss to Partner for Early Technology Testing

The Salk Institute's Waitt Advanced Biophotonics Center and the Zeiss Group have announced a global partnership to accelerate the frontiers of microscopy and imaging technologies.

From left to right: James A. Sharp, President, Carl Zeiss Microscopy LLC; Uri Manor, Ph.D., Waitt Advanced Biophotonics Core Director; Elizabeth Blackburn, Ph.D., President, Salk Institute; Jacob A. James, Managing Director, Waitt Foundation. Courtesy of the Salk Institute.

Zeiss will collaborate with Salk scientists to receive critical feedback on challenging imaging needs to further push the boundaries of imaging technologies to new frontiers. The Waitt Center serves as a state-of-the-art research hub, offering next-generation imaging, visualization and data analysis tools to researchers from across many biological disciplines including cancer, neuroscience, plant biology and immunology. Now, the Waitt Center's partnership with Zeiss will enable access to state-of-the-art Zeiss technology before it's commercially available.

"Overall, this is a unique opportunity that gives Salk scientists a chance to not only benefit from Zeiss technology as it is being developed but also to influence how the next generation of microscopes are designed," said Uri Manor, director of the Waitt Center and Salk staff scientist.

Zeiss recently assisted the Waitt Center with an expansion microscopy workshop, which is expected to be the first of many hands-on workshops and courses supported by Zeiss personnel and equipment. In the future, the partnership will reach full force as the Waitt Center collaborates with Zeiss to develop, test, optimize and perform next-generation biological imaging experiments with alpha and beta versions of hardware and software for everything from high-speed 4D fluorescence imaging to cryocorrelative fluorescence and electron microscopy.

"We are delighted to have this opportunity to help advance critical technology so essential to many areas of cutting-edge biological fields," said Elizabeth Blackburn, president of the Salk Institute. "This partnership enables us to have access to the latest imaging technology and will have tremendous impact on our ability to visualize and better understand the workings of biology and disease."

"The ZEISS labs@location Partnership Program is a community of key customers and partners providing in-depth knowledge and dedicated services to support our microscopy business," said Jim Sharp, president of Carl Zeiss Microscopy LLC. "We are very excited to work more closely with the Salk Institute to not only improve our West Coast presence, but also better understand and respond to the ever-changing needs of our user base."

Zeiss is a developer of optics and optoelectronics technologies.