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The University of Western Australia will soon be home to one of the most powerful microscopes in Australia that can capture 3-D images of objects and surfaces at the molecular or nanoparticle level in real time.

A group of researchers led by Winthrop Professor Shaun Collin has been awarded a $500,000 Australian Research Council (ARC) grant to help purchase the microscope that will be able to combine high-speed multiphoton and optical imaging with atomic force microscopy.

The grant was awarded to a collaboration of researchers from UWA, Edith Cowan University and Curtin University of Technology including; UWA's Prof Shaun Collin, Prof Colin Raston, Prof David Sampson, Prof James Whelan and Prof Sarah Dunlop; Edith Cowan University's Prof Ralph Martins and Dr Giuseppe Verdile; and Curtin University's Prof Mark Ogden, Prof Charles Watson, Dr Qin Li, A/Prof Xia Lou, and Dr Massimiliano Massi.

The ARC Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grant will be supplemented by funding from the three partner universities.

"The money will be used to acquire what's called a multiphoton confocal microscope," said Professor Collin, of UWA's Oceans Institute and the University's School of Animal Biology.

"It will provide a world-leading facility for researchers in various disciplines, and give them a new way of seeing and analysing things.  "Such a microscope will be able to provide researchers with 3-D images of nanoparticles, cells, tissues and whole animals at high speed with unsurpassed resolution at the atomic level.

"Research teams will use the microscope for such things as high-speed, deep tissue imaging and multimodal nanoscale characterisation."

Professor Collin said the new microscope would greatly assist research undertaken by biomedical, physical and life scientists, and materials engineers.

"For the first time, they'll be able to image a range of processes at the nano level and reconstruct these in 3-D," he said.

"Nanotechnology involves working with things at the molecular level, with a nanometre being one billionth - or 1/1,000,000,000 ^th of a metre - in size, so you can appreciate how extremely powerful the new microscope will be."

The new microscope will be housed at UWA's Crawley campus and is expected to be available to researchers across Western Australia in 2011.

Media references

Winthrop Professor Shaun Collin (UWA School of Animal Biology,  (+61 8)  6488 2632
UWA Oceans Institute)
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716