FEI Partners With the George Washington University to Equip New Science & Engineering Hall

FEI and the George Washington University (GW) are pleased to announce that they are partnering to install several new high-performance microscopes at GW’s Science and Engineering Hall. The new, $275 million, 500,000-square-foot research facility will soon be home to four microscopes from FEI: the Talos™ F200X transmission electron microscope (TEM), Helios NanoLab™ 660 DualBeam, Teneo™ scanning electron microscope (SEM), and CorrSight™ advanced light microscope for correlative light/electron microscopy. These systems will be used by professors and their students for research covering the full spectrum from materials through life sciences.

“We are very pleased to work with FEI to acquire and install these microscopes,” said GW’s Vice President for Research, Leo Chalupa. “This new equipment will enable our faculty and students to perform groundbreaking research and prepare our students to become leaders in STEM.”

GW’s research funding has grown by 80 percent in the past decade and the University opened a Science and Engineering Hall on March 4, 2015. They selected the unique suite of high-end light and electron microscopes from FEI because they provide the ease-of-use and workflows needed for a multidisciplinary microscopy suite. GW’s objective is to provide an environment that cross-pollinates research disciplines, enhances collaboration and streamlines equipment budgets.

“Historically, GW has operated like most universities do; they conduct research by department, in separate laboratories, with individual budgets. GW is changing the dynamic of how they do research by combining STEM fields in one facility, where the researchers and students will share instrumentation and work together more closely,” said Thomas Russo, assistant vice president, Industry and Corporate Research.

Conor Walsh, vice president of FEI’s Science Group, said, “FEI has developed a workflow solution that enables the data and images from the microscopes to be combined using our MAPS™ software. This enables the use of a variety of modalities to get different information about the sample at various lengths of scale – from microns, to nanometers, even down to ångströms, the scale of individual atoms. The workflows also enhance the usability of the instruments so that all users can focus on conducting research, and not spend a lot of time learning how to operate the tools.”

Each instrument offers a unique capability:

• Talos TEM provides atomic-scale image resolution, combined with high-throughput chemical mapping and tomography, all in an easy-to-use integrated package for a multi-disciplinary lab;
• Helios NanoLab DualBeam offers three-dimensional imaging using automated serial sectioning by focused ion beam (FIB); TEM sample preparation from bulk samples; and circuit edit capabilities;
• Teneo is a highly-versatile, high-resolution (SEM) that offers multiple, simultaneous detection modes and high-contrast imaging on a wide variety of samples from steels to insulators;
• CorrSight is an advanced, inverted fluorescent-light microscope workflow solution specifically-designed for live-cell imaging and sample preparation for electron microscopy (EM). CorrSight is able to image samples with visible light and identify features or events of interest, then prepare and transfer those samples to EM, including the transfer of target locations, a technique known as correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM).

“We couldn’t be more pleased to be working with GW to install these systems in their new, state-of-the-art Science and Engineering Hall,” said Walsh. “We look forward to further collaboration with GW and its partners in the Washington, D.C. region, including the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Smithsonian Institution, among others.”