5th Course on Principles and Applications of Time-Resolved Fluorescence Spectroscopy

Course Chairman: Rainer Erdmann, PicoQuant GmbH

Summary

This course was held in Europe for the fifth time and was again a great success. Altogether more than 70 people from universities and industry from 23 different countries participated. They attended 14 lectures and 6 hands-on experiment sessions with 8 different instruments from 4 companies, covering different methods and procedures in fluorescence spectroscopy.

Aims and Purpose

The course is intended for individuals wishing an in-depth introduction to the principles of fluorescence spectroscopy and its applications to the Life Sciences. Attendees are typically professionals who are using or intend to use fluorescence in their research. Most attendees have some knowledge of fluorescence, typically in a specialized area. However, other individuals, from totally different research areas and industry, get the opportunity to enter this exciting field in a very effective way and benefit especially from the experimental section.

Course instructors

Joseph R. Lakowicz, Professor of Biochemistry and Director of the Center for Fluorescence Spectroscopy
Zygmunt "Karol" Gryczynski, Professor at the Department of Molecular Biology and Immunology at the University of North Texas
Rainer Erdmann, Managing Director of the R&D company PicoQuant GmbH and specialist in ultrasensitive fluorescence analysis
Matthias Patting, Senior Scientist at PicoQuant GmbH and specialist in software design for time-correlated single photon counting instrumentation
Michael Wahl, Senior Scientist at PicoQuant GmbH and specialist in instrumentation for time-correlated single photon counting

Guest lecturers (in alphabetical order)

Manfred Auer, Head of Innovative Screening Technologies (IST) at the Novartis Lead Discovery Center, as well as lecturer for Biophysical Chemistry at the University of Salzburg, Austria. He specializes in the development of novel drug discovery technologies.
Jörg Enderlein, Professor at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He specializes in Single Molecule Detection, Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS) and complex data analysis.
Paul French, Head of the Photonics group at the Imperial College London, UK. He specializes on biomedical optics with particular emphasis on coherence-gated imaging through turbid media and fluorescence lifetime imaging applied to molecular biology, clinical imaging and drug discovery.
Cristina Flors, Post-Doc in the single molecule and fluorescence microscopy group in the laboratory for photochemistry and spectroscopy, devision for molecular and nanomaterials, departement for chemistry, KULeuven, Belgium. She is specialized in application of time resolved fluorescence techniques and single molecule spectroscopy in material science and biosciences.

Course organisation

The lectures on Monday and Tuesday dealt with basic principles of fluorescence spectroscopy, while from Wednesday to Friday more specialized topics were covered:

Monday and Tuesday - Principles of Fluorescence Spectroscopy

These lectures dealt with the basics of steady-state and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy and instrumentation. They covered time- and frequency-domain measurements, anisotropy, solvent effects, quenching and Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET), as well as an introduction into data analysis.

Wednesday to Friday - Time-Resolved Fluorescence Spectroscopy: Principles, Instrumentation and Applications

These lectures emphasised time-resolved fluorescence along with advanced applications of fluorescence in biophysics, sensing, imaging, clinical chemistry, microscopy and ultrasensitive detection. Guest lectures were given on various topics, like fluorescence microscopy, correlation spectroscopy and single molecule detection.

Apart from the lectures, hands-on experimentation (steady-state and time-resolved experiments as well as data analysis) was offered on various instruments provided by market leading companies.

Hands-on Experimentation

Several hands-on experiments were offered during the course, including:

Laser Scanning Microscopy Olympus	Frequency domain lifetime measurements ISS	Single Molecule Microscopy PicoQuant

Time domain lifetime meausrements PicoQuant	Steady-state fluorescence Varian	Data analysis PicoQuant

Program

The time schedule is still available for download as a pdf document:

The time schedule (49 KB)

Previous Courses

The European short course on "Principles and Applications of Time-Resolved Fluorescence Spectroscopy" is an annual event since 2003. For further details about each year's event, please select the year from the list below.