On February 12th, the inaugural Royal Microscopical Society High Content Imaging (HCI) workshop was held at Jubilee Conference Centre, University of Nottingham. Organised by Tim Self and Steve Briddon (COMPARE; University of Nottingham) and Jacquelyn Bond (University of Leeds), the meeting was aimed at PhD students, ECRs and academics just starting out in HCI, or considering moving into the area. The workshop was attended by 19 delegates from academia and industry across the U.K., as well as eight invited speakers and seven exhibitors, who had also kindly provided generous sponsorship.

Presentations from Steve Bagley (Manchester), Liz Rosethorne (Nottingham), Steve Brown (Sheffield) and Alex Sossick (Cambridge) covered HCI hardware, experimental design and data analysis and management. Following short “Technobite” presentations from each of the exhibitors, an extended lunch break saw an intensive round of software demonstrations from Carl Zeiss, Molecular Devices, Nikon, Olympus, Perkin Elmer and ThermoFisher. Further excellent case study presentations followed lunch, demonstrating the use of HCI in 3D imaging of spheroids (Jano Kristin-Vizi, UCL), cell cycle analysis (Alexis Barr, MRC London), GPCR pharmacology (Steve Briddon, Nottingham) and siRNA screening (Katarzyna Szymanska, Leeds).

Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable, if intense, day which was had by all. Many thanks to the RMS Office for their help with the organisation, the speakers for their well-judged presentations and the exhibitors for their sponsorship and informative demonstrations. Based on the very positive feedback, planning for a follow up meeting next year is already underway!