26^th International Workshop on
“Single Molecule Spectroscopy and Super-resolution Microscopy”

September 29 – October 1, 2021, Berlin, Germany

General
Speakers
Program
Student Award
Archive
Impressions

Summary

The 26th International Workshop on “Single Molecule Spectroscopy and Super-resolution Microscopy” was the first on-site meeting in the single molecule community since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The workshop gave scientists from 13 different countries the opportunity to finally meet in person for sharing their most recent results in the field of ultrasensitive optical detection down to the single molecule level and beyond the classical diffraction limit. “It was really exciting to once again see so many members of the single molecule community and to interact with them in person. Judging from the feedback I got, the participants also greatly enjoyed networking and talking science while being in the same real world location”, said Rainer Erdmann, Managing Director of PicoQuant.

The scientific program encompassed 70 talks and posters by students and renowned scientists alike. A wide range of topics and techniques were covered, such as MIET, PAINT, or machine learning approaches for image analysis. Among the highlights were a presentation by Viktoria Glembockyte (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany) on using a smartphone camera for detecting single molecules by using nanopillars for amplifying fluorescence or the invited talk by Prof. Jennifer Lippincott-Schwarz (Janelia Research Institute, USA) on emerging imaging technologies for studying the architecture, function and dynamics of cells.

Invited speakers and their titles

Nynke Dekker
TU Delft, The Netherlands
"Adventures in DNA replication using single-molecule biophysics"
Christian Eggeling
Institute for Applied Optics and Biophysics, Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, Germany
"Cytosolic super-resolution STED-FCS - aberration correction and applications"
Luke D. Lavis
Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn, Virginia, United States
"Building brighter dyes for advanced fluorescence microscopy"
Eitan Lerner
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
"The structure-function relationship of an unstructured protein: the α-synuclein case"

Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz
Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn, Virginia, United States
"Emerging imaging technologies to study cell architecture, dynamics and function"
Gail McConnell
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom
"Mesoscopic optical imaging with the Mesolens"
Petra Schwille
Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany
"Quantitative fluorescence microscopy below the diffraction limit. Next generation tools for FCS and single particle tracking"
Philip Tinnefeld
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany
"Single-molecule biophysics and superresolution with Graphene Energy Transfer"

Program

The program is still available for download:

Program 26th Single Molecule Workshop (PDF)

Student award

This year's 18 contributions for "best talk by a young researcher" were all excellent, which made selecting a single winner next to impossible. Thus, the 750 Euro prize was split amongst three winners: Jonas Zähringer (LMU München, Germany) for his presentation on "Exploiting Fluorescence Lifetime in Pulsed Interleaved MINFLUX", Prithu Roy (Aix Marseille University, France) for his talk abouot "Label-Free study of Single-Proteins using Deep-UV Plasmonic Horn Antennas", and Mark Nüesch (University Zurich, Switzerland) for his work on "Enhancing the single molecule detection of ultrafast biomolecular dynamics with nanophotonics". Thanks to all participants and congratulations to the three winners!