The editors congratulate the winners of the fourth annual Microscopy Today Innovation Awards competition. These awards were established to honor innovative microscopy-related products and methods that appeared in the previous year.
Our team of judges, led by Tom Kelly, looked for innovations that will make new scientific investigations possible. The ten winning innovations were selected on the basis of their importance and usefulness to the microscopy community. The entries most likely to win are those that provide better, faster, or entirely new methods of analysis using some type of microscope or microanalytical instrument.
The 2013 Microscopy Today Innovation Award winners are:
N. Tao of Arizona State University for Plasmonic-Based Electrochemical Microscopy
Delft University of Technology& DELMIC BV for Scanning Electron Combined Optical Microscopy
Hysitron, Inc. for the PI 87 SEM PicoIndenter, enabling in-situ nanomechanical measurements
Nanonics Imaging Ltd. for the 3TB4000 Triple Beam NSOM/AFM & SEM/FIB Microscope™
Neaspec GmbH for Nano-FTIR, employing apertureless near-field microscopy
Phase Focus Ltd. & Gatan, Inc. for the Phase Focus Virtual Lens®
Protochips, Inc. for the Poseidon 500, enabling hydrated electrical experiments in TEM
J. Miao of the University of California, Los Angeles, for Atomic Resolution Electron Tomography
A. Ozcan of the University of California, Los Angeles, for Lensfree On-Chip Microscopy
Carl Zeiss Microscopy LLC for the ORION NanoFab, integrating He, Ne, and Ga focused ion beams
Descriptions of the above innovations are given in an article within this issue. This article also lists the developers of these instruments and methods.
Details of the nomination process for the next competition will be posted on the Microscopy Today website (www.microscopy-today.com) by January 1, 2014. Nomination applications will be accepted through March 15, 2014.
