Report on 9th K.H. Kuo Summer School in June, 2016
The 9th K. H. Kuo Summer School of Electron Microscopy Crystallography was held in Beijing, China from June 24 to 30, 2016, organized by Hongwei Wang (Tsinghua University, China) and Peijun Zhang (University of Pittsburgh, USA).
IUPAB contributed funding to support the summer school.
The organizers invited more than 40 famous scientists in the field of cryo-EM across the world to attend the Summer School, such as Joachim Frank (Columbia University, USA), Robert Glaeser (University of California, Berkeley, USA), Richard Henderson (MRC Molecular Biology Laboratory, UK), Eva Nogales (University of California, Berkeley), Yifan Cheng (University of California, San Francisco, USA) and others.
About 150 participants attended the summer school and they were taught by scientists from Tsinghua University, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University of California at San Francisco, Baylor College of Medicine and engineers from FEI company, etc. All attendees learned and discussed the topics including the theory of electron microscopy, image processing and micro-electron diffraction, software demo practices for single particle, practices on negative stained and frozen sample preparation, and EM operation for auto data collection during the summer school.
During the Summer School, scientists in the field of cryo-EM gave talks on the newest topics of cryo-EM covered new advances in cryo-EM technologies, electron diffraction, cryo-EM on high symmetric structures, single particle application and dynamic, cryo-EM of membrane protein, cryo-EM of cellular structure and electron tomography. The pioneer of single particle and member of the US National Academy of Sciences, Prof. Joachim Frank, gave the keynote lecture on “Single particle cryo-EM at 2.3 angstrom resolution – a dream come true. But what is next?”, presenting a comprehensive summary of the history of single particle and put forward an exciting prospect for the future development of this technology. Additionally, 42 posters selected from the submitted abstracts were presented by students and young scientists, among which five were selected to give oral presentations.
The 9th K. H. Kuo Summer School provided a good opportunity for young scientists and students in the field of cryo-EM, especially those from developing countries, to understand and learn the theory and technology of cryo-EM, discuss the newest progress in Cryo-EM, and directly interact with the leading scientists. The Summer School also promoted international communication and cooperation, which promoted the development of cryo-EM and structural biology.
