Advanced Core for Microscope Engineering (ACME)

The Advanced Core for Microscope Engineering (ACME) is located in the Perelman School of Medicine. Our core seeks to provide custom built ad hoc optical microscopy solutions, advanced image analysis, and consultation services to researchers across the Penn campus and beyond. Microscopy capabilities are advancing at a rapid pace and the ability of most labs to access these capabilities depends on commercial instruments which are (1) often at least a decade behind the state-of-the-art in the literature, (2) expensive, (3) have limited flexibility/adaptability, (4) aren’t easily customizable/hackable due to proprietary technologies and software, and (5) when rendered obsolete or if unused have limited cost-recovery potential. Our goal is to overcome these limitations and provide the latest technologies and non-commercially available specialized advanced microscopy instrumentation to labs at Penn. Our team will work collaboratively to address the needs of individual labs, for example to implement custom super-resolution, light-sheet, and or multimodal imaging platforms designed around specific sample types and spatial and temporal resolution requirements.  

Fill out an intake form to initiate a project or contact us for more details.