Last week, Olympus joined the University of Maryland (UMD) in celebrating the grand opening of its new Olympus Discovery Center. The event included a bioengineering seminar presented by Dr. Andrew Tsourkas of the Tsourkas Lab at the University of Pennsylvania and a tour of the new facility.

Image Credit: Thai Q. Nguyen, University of Maryland

Instrumental tools for bioscience and biotech innovators

The inauguration of the Olympus Discovery Center at UMD equips its bioengineering scientists with crucial imaging tools to expand and progress their research. Providing a suite of powerful, high-performance microscopy systems, the new facility enables observation deep into living tissue to encourage ground-breaking study of cellular and subcellular events.

Housed in A. James Clark Hall, the new Olympus Discovery Center is located in a hub of engineering innovation and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Under the same roof, students exploring novel approaches and strategies in a range of bioscience and biotechnology research areas can share and benefit from the center’s imaging resources.

Image Credit: Thai Q. Nguyen, University of Maryland

Supporting breakthroughs in bioengineering research

To enable the observation of cell cultures and living tissues down to the subcellular level, equipment at this Olympus Discovery Center includes a FLUOVIEW™ FV3000RS laser scanning confocal system, a FVMPE-RS™ multiphoton system, an IX83 IXplore™ live cell system, as well as a CKX53 cell culture microscope and SZ/SZX series stereo microscopes.

The cutting-edge equipment made available through the Olympus Discovery Center at the University of Maryland will provide our world-class researchers with additional tools to advance knowledge in critical areas such as cancer diagnosis and treatment, cell biology and tissue engineering. I look forward to the future discoveries this partnership will help unlock.”

Gregory Ball, Vice President, Research University of Maryland

“Inaugurating an Olympus Discovery Center at UMD fits with our continued efforts to provide bioscience innovators the resources they need to further their scientific aims,” says Lee Wagstaff, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Olympus Scientific Solutions Americas. “We are proud that Olympus microscopy technologies will assist UMD scientists in making discoveries that will shape the way we treat injuries and diseases.”

Olympus Discovery Centers provide researchers the ability to acquire and analyze vital imaging data using advanced microscopy tools. They also serve as a nexus for histology training, information and technique development, as well as a center for learning sample preparation, imaging and image processing. Olympus works closely with its academic partners to develop new products to meet the changing needs of researchers.