This story compiled using notes from Yingying Qin, Postdoctoral Fellow, 3dNanoscopy Group, UiT The Arctic University of Norway
We flew long haul from Tromsø to Taiwan. 11 hours and one spectacular sunrise later our 3dNanoscopy crew touched down in Taichung just in time for the opening session of this year’s Focus on Taiwan.
Why we went
A call earlier this spring invited contributions on every flavor of microscopy—hardware builds, algorithmic tricks and theoretical insights. Our group leader, Professor Krishna Agarwal, made sure we didn’t miss it, and by the program deadline every traveler in our team had an abstract accepted for either a talk or a poster.
Highlights from the podium
- Professor Krishna Agarwal opened Day 1 with an invited plenary on the MUSICAL super‑resolution algorithm. She told the story behind the math—why it works, how it evolved, and what it unlocks in practice. Judging by the queue of questions that followed (and the colleague who was still looking for her two days later!), the story landed well.
- I caught talks by Yi Huang, Farhad Niknam and Biswajoy Ghosh. Martin Nilsen Stave overlapped with Farhad, but the rest of the group filled in the seats.
- We also cheered on Komal at her poster session.
My own slot
My talk focused on our latest forward‑and‑inverse solver for optical scattering, sharing both simulated data and the first experimental results (manuscript in prep). I also had the honor—and adrenaline—of chairing the session. Note to future self: remember to introduce the first speaker’s affiliation!
Science meets snacks
Between sessions we roamed the exhibition booths, tested new objective lenses and, yes, sampled the legendary conference bubble tea. The schedule was dense, the jet lag real, but the ice‑cream‑and‑fruit bar helped.
A small mystery
After Farhad’s well‑received first talk several researchers returned for his follow‑up, only to find the slot empty. Their curiosity is a good sign—watch this space for the full story once the work is ready.
The crew
- Krishna Agarwal – Professor & Group Leader
- Dilip K. Prasad – Professor
- Yingying Qin – Postdoctoral Fellow
- Biswajoy Ghosh – Postdoctoral Fellow
- Farhad Niknam – PhD Candidate
- Yi Huang – PhD Candidate
- Martin Nilsen Stave – MSc Student / Engineer
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Posted from a very sunny Tromsø, thanks for reading!