9th 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 ninth time and was again an inspiring event. Altogether more than 40 people from universities and industry from 19 different countries participated. They attended 12 lectures and 5 hands-on experiment sessions with 5 different instruments from 2 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 Physics and Astronomy at the Texas Christian University
Rainer Erdmann, Managing Director of the R&D company PicoQuant GmbH and specialist in ultrasensitive fluorescence analysis
Felix Koberling, Senior Scientist at PicoQuant GmbH and specialist in time-resolved fluorescence microscopy
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

Course organisation

The lectures on Monday and Tuesday dealt with basic of steady-state and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy, instrumentation and data analysis. They covered time- and frequency-domain measurements, anisotropy, solvent effects, quenching and Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET).

The lectures on Wednesday and Thursday covered advanced time-resolved fluorescence topics and data analysis. Applications of fluorescence in biophysics, sensing, clinical chemistry or material science were presented along with an introduction into fluorescence microscopy.

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:

Steady-state fluorescence Agilent	Data analysis PicoQuant	Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging (FLIM) PicoQuant

Time domain lifetime measurements PicoQuant	Time domain anisotropy measurements PicoQuant

Program

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

The time schedule (29 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.