Evident SLIDEVIEW VS200 Slide Scanner

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Located in New York’s capital city, the University at Albany (UA) was established in 1844 as the first public institution of higher learning in New York State. Today, this is the premier public research university in the Capital District region, offering more than 17,000 students the opportunities of a large university while maintaining an environment designed to foster individual success. This is achieved by promoting multidisciplinary and collaborative research by undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, research staff, and faculty affiliated not only with UA, but also with neighboring institutions like Albany Medical Center (AMC), the Neural Stem Cell Institute (NSCI), and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Recently, UA launched two major initiatives. The Next Generation Artificial Intelligence (AI) Supercomputer Cluster for Education and Research at UA aims to transform the AI supercomputing resources available in the Capital District. The Healthy Aging Initiative aims to build an inter-institutional, interdisciplinary research, collaboration, and community-engaged network focused on advancing knowledge about aging and translating that new knowledge into practice, education, and workforce development. To expand our AI resources in STEM, while also celebrating our faculty’s historic interdisciplinary collaborative research, we identified an urgent need for an Evident SLIDEVIEW VS200 research slide scanner. This advanced microscope is capable of automating image acquisition using up to five different observation methods (Brightfield, Phase contrast, Darkfield, Polarization, Fluorescence). Its exquisite robotics design allows to load and unload up to 35 sample trays with a maximum capacity of 210 slides rapidly and safely, allowing the system to be versatile for users with different samples and image acquisition requirements. The settings for image acquisition can be saved and shared among multiple uses, allowing “walk away” slide scanning, which allows multiple users to plan for their image acquisition without the need of being physically present in front of the microscope. To the best of our knowledge, this will be the first slide scanner available for shared use in the Capital District. Therefore, the acquisition of this advanced imaging platform, which will be accessible to users across different institutions, will be critical to streamline the workflow for a wide variety of research programs across our major and minor user groups, encompassing diverse fields including cellular neuroscience, cell and stem cell biology, cell-cell communication in organ development, microbial communities in human health in the broader research community of New York’s Capital region. The modular design of this instrument also offers excellent upgrade capabilities, making it ideally suited to meet the scientific needs of cutting edge research programs in our region.