Diamond Annual Review 2023/24

21 D I A M O N D L I G H T S O U R C E A N N U A L R E V I E W 2 0 2 3 / 2 4 levels of experience. Sample preparation was the first area we focused on for training of our users back in 2016 and this topic continues to be in high demand to meet the needs of the community. This year’s course formed part of the iNEXT-Discovery training programme that we are partnered in. Continuing with iNEXT-Discovery, eBIC participated in a multi-country/centre iNEXT-Discovery workshop in cryo-FIB, lamella preparation and cryo-ET with students distributed across five geographically distinct sites (eBIC, IGBMC/ CBI Strasbourg, EMBL Heidelberg and CEITEC, Brno). Students were taught with hands-on practicals at each site and joined together for virtual lectures covering background and theory. Other joint training courses have been executed with CCP-EM through the Icknield Model building workshop and our wellcome funded cryoEM training programwith University of Leeds, University of Glasgow, University of Leicester and Birkbeck, University of London that offered courses in single particle cryoEM and Cryo-ET. Finally we continue to provide highly focused and practical training for eBIC users through our BAG training sessions which take place three to four times a year. The biggest event of the year for us and our users to meet and discuss everything from accessing our instruments to what’s new, what’s working well, what can be better and dissemination of the science being performed is the annual BCI user meeting which is jointly organised with the CCP-EM spring symposium. This year was a special event as it marked the 10th anniversary of the CCP-EM symposium as well as ten years of eBIC. The jointly organised event with CCP-EM has become hugely successful and the number of registered users this year was 1,325! The meeting was a hybrid event with 365 attendees in person and 960 virtual attendees. The BCI user meeting takes up day one of the three-day joint meeting and consists of a series of parallel workshops in the morning and an afternoon session of talks from our scientists, users and plenary lectures, ending with a discussion and feedback session on the user programme offered at eBIC and B24. The full programme can be reviewed online. This year’s satellite workshop topics were Visualising structures in cells: latest in correlative microscopy organised by James Gilchrist and Parijat Majumder from eBIC and Itziar Serna Martin from Thermo Fisher Scientific; Soft X-ray tomography applicability and accessibility organised by Archana Jadhav from B24 and Automated live processing for SPA and cryoET at eBIC organised by Dan Hatton and Stephen Riggs (eBIC data analysis team). A record attendance of 265 in person and 464 unique remote users engaged in the BCI meeting this year which meant a very lively and engaging day of talks and discussion. The day was wrapped up with a reception, live music and ceilidh dancing. Next year's user meeting will again take place at the East Midlands conference centre in Nottinghamandwe look forward tomeeting you all there. The eBIC team.