Eminent scholars from academia worldwide shared their insights into challenges and perspectives in advanced electron microscopy and instrumentation and their applications in materials science, biology and physics at a forum hosted by the Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study (HKIAS) at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) from 11 to 14 December.

The four-day forum took place at CityU on 11 and 12 December and the CityU Shenzhen Futian Research Institute on 13 and 14 December. It provided a platform for students and the scientific community to discuss the use of combinations of state-of-the-art techniques in electron microscopy and their applications with world-leading scholars, and initiate and strengthen international collaboration.

The forum focused on four key areas: Electron Microscopy in Materials Physics; Advanced Instrumentation and Quantum Electron Microscopy; Spectroscopy and Ultrafast Imaging; and Imaging Soft Matter by Electron Microscopy. It featured over 30 speakers from around the world, including two Kavli and Wolf Prize Laureates.

In his opening speech, Professor Chen Fu-rong, Associate Vice-President (Mainland Collaboration), Chair Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and one of the Co-Chairs of the forum, said that CityU is rapidly developing. The establishment of the CityU Matter Research Institute in Shenzhen makes CityU the first university in Hong Kong to be represented in the Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone.

Professor Chen also introduced the development of the Time-resolved Aberration Corrected Environmental (TRACE) Electron Microscope Centre at CityU and gave a talk titled “Atomic Resolution 3D Dynamics of Helix Materials: Present and Future”.

The forum featured talks by two keynote speakers, namely Professor Knut Urban and Professor Maximilian Haider. Both are Wolf Prize Laureates in Physics (2011) and Kavli Prize Laureates in Nanoscience (2020). Professor Urban elaborated on precision measurements of atomic positions and displacements in aberration-corrected conventional transmission electron microscopy, while Professor Haider discussed prospects for future instrumental developments in advanced electron microscopy.