Media

Dr Kevin Tsia from the HKU Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering will introduce in a Zoom press conference tomorrow (April 9) at 11am two cutting edge microscopy technologies which will greatly push the boundaries of scientific research and real-life applications.

The first one is an ultrafast microscope capable of detecting the millisecond-changing activities of individual neurons in the living brain, which will provide the crucial ‘tool’ for breakthrough to be made in neuroscience research to more accurately “decoding” brain signals for a more comprehensive understanding of the functions of the brain and related diseases. The technology is developed in collaboration with neuroscientists at UC Berkeley. The team successfully recorded signals in the neurons of an alert mouse. The research findings have recently been published in Nature Methods.

Another cutting edge optical imaging technology on 3D fluorescence microscopy not only enables faster imaging, but more importantly offers a novel solution to living cells imaging, making it possible research in unexplored areas such as tracking how an animal embryo develops into its adult form; monitoring in real-time how bacteria or viruses infect their host cells and organisms; how drugs such as target drugs work on living cancer cells, and other challenging tasks unachievable by existing technologies today. The findings have been published in Light: Science & Applications.

The key to the cutting edge technologies is a pair of parallel mirrors, an innovative design for microscopy developed by Dr Tsia’s team earlier which enables scanning at ultra-fast speed and exhibits unique properties that out-perform existing technologies.

Details of the Zoom press briefing are as follows:

Date: April 9, 2020 (Thursday)
Time: 11:00am (HKT)
Spokespersons: Dr Kevin Tsia, Associate Professor of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Programme Director of Bachelor of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering of the University of Hong Kong.

Join Zoom conference: https://hku.zoom.us/s/997848452
Meeting ID: 997-848-452

The press releases of the above research will be sent to the media at 10:00am on 9 April 2020 via email and will also be available for download at the same time from the HKU webpage.

Media enquiries:
Ms Celia Lee, Faculty of Engineering, HKU (Tel: 3917 8519; Email: leecelia@hku.hk) or
Miss Bonnie Tsang, Faculty of Engineering, HKU (Tel: 3917 1924; Email: bonniepy@hku.hk)