Laurel Raftery, Andrew Andres, Ai-Sun "Kelly" Tseng, and Boo Shan Tseng (all Life Sciences), and Hong Sun (Chemistry & Biochemistry), have been awarded a National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation grant to purchase a multiphoton fluorescence imaging system titled "MRI: Acquisition of a High Speed Multiphoton Laser-Scanning Microscope for Research and Training at UNLV." Raftery is the principal investigator, while Andres, Sun, Tseng, and Tseng are co-principal investigators. Collaborators on the award are Nora Caberoy, Sophie Choe, Jeffery Shen, and Jenifer Utz (all Life Sciences), Rochelle Hines (Psychology), and Kwang Kim (Mechanical Engineering). The $998,614 microscope system will be installed in 2018, and operated on a first-come-first-served, fee-for-service basis, through the UNLV confocal and biological imaging core. It will be Nevada's first multiphoton system for thick tissue (1mm) time-lapse imaging. This technology enables new discoveries in neurobiology, tissue formation, organ repair and whole-scale regeneration, and ion flux in biological tissues and in eletroactive polymer materials for engineering, and expands to other research areas through graduate student training and through recruitment of new faculty and other scientists to work at UNLV and other Southern Nevada technology centers.
