3rd International Workshop on Near-field Optical Imaging and Spectroscopy
Dr. Jess Boland hosted the 3rd International Workshop on Near-field Optical Imaging and Spectroscopy on the 22nd and 23rd January at The University of Manchester. This 2-day workshop was attended by researchers from across Europe and industrial practitioners. Across the two days, Jess led facilitated discussions and connected delegates with our facilities and expertise.
Over the course of the event, there were insightful talks from academics, PostDocs and PhD students on the latest research, as well as a talk from the Director of Sales & Applications Development from Attocube GmbH on the applications of s-SNOM in a range of sectors. These talks were followed by a group discussion on the overview of the UK landscape and the next steps for the network. This included looking at the UK Government’s 5 critical technologies of AI, Engineering Biology, Future Telecommunications, Semiconductors and Quantum Technologies and discussing how the community could best contribute to these. Prof. Peter Gardner, University of Manchester, said that “the discussion about instrumentation and experimentation was invaluable and we can see real scope for future collaboration.
There was also a focused session on how to extract material properties from near-field measurements in a reproducible, quantitative fashion to support the government missions.
At the end of the first day, delegates were treated to a conference dinner at Manchester Museum, giving them the opportunity to continue discussions from the first day whilst admiring Stan the Tyrannosaurus rex and April the Tenontosaurus.
On the event, Dr Jessica Boland commented: ‘It was great to see so many researchers from different disciplines at the event –both experts and non-experts in near-field imaging and spectroscopy! There discussions were invaluable for building a UK community in this area and seeing how we can use near-field techniques to tackle some key scientific challenges facing the government’s critical technologies.’
Dr. Dean Whittaker from NPL said of the event, “It was great to see the SNOM community come together and share their scientific output, successes and challenges. The interactive sessions were engaging and particularly useful to understand which areas need most focus. I look forward to seeing where NPL can fit to help this growing community accelerate progress in experiments that benefit a wide range of sectors from Quantum Technology to Biology.”