The Abberior Facility Line Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) super-resolution microscope was installed in May 2021. The system was ordered in September 2020 and was delivered in February 2021 but due to COVID-19 restrictions, it was not possible for engineers from overseas to come over to install it.
A contingency plan was developed whereby University of Auckland staff would install the system with remote support from vendor staff in Germany. To everyone's relief, the border between New Zealand and Australia opened in May allowing an engineer (Jose Quevedo) and Lastek representative Dr Carola Thoni to come over and install the system. This took a week and shortly afterwards, the border closed again.
The system is running well but there is still a lot to learn and a number of remote sessions with experts from Germany have already been necessary. This is not unexpected given the circumstances but time differences make for a long day on both sides! Some researchers have already been trained on the system. Funding for the system was provided through The University of Auckland 2019 Shared Research Infrastructure (SRI) Fund. See specifications here.
