Bi-Chang Chen spent the fifth day of his postdoctoral fellowship in a rented van headed for Cape Cod. He’d barely had time to unpack at Janelia Farm before he was enlisted to help take apart the very microscope he had come to Virginia to work on. Its lenses, mirrors, lasers, and other components were now fastidiously packed and stowed in the back of the van, traveling north on I-95. Chen was about to undergo what his new boss, Janelia Farm group leader Eric Betzig, was calling “trial by fire.”

Chen and his new colleague, Liang Gao, were transporting the Betzig lab’s newest technology to the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts—a seaside hub of scientific activity with an educational program that draws hundreds of students and faculty from around the world each summer. It would take a full day to reassemble its components into what the Betzig group calls a Bessel beam plane illumination microscope—a high-speed, high-resolution, three-dimensional imaging technology that gives extraordinarily detailed views of cellular processes in action.

The plan was for Gao and Thomas Planchon—developers of the new microscope—to guide MBL students and faculty through the imaging process as they examined their specimens. Chen would have to learn quickly how to operate the microscope, because the team expected a steady stream of users, all demanding expert attention. In exchange, the Betzig team hoped to learn exactly what biologists need their microscope to do.

Photo: Jared Leeds