Turku BioImaging holds discussions with the Academy of Finland and the Ministry of Education and Culture

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Turku BioImaging has recently held talks with the Academy of Finland and the Ministry of Education and Culture, regarding the future of funding for imaging in Finland. TBI’s head of biological imaging, Pasi Kankaanpää, has arranged the talks, with participation from Helsinki BioImaging and Oulu BioImaging. As the situation with Finland’s science funding in general is challenging, it is important that we do everything we can to try to ensure that critical activities for Finnish life sciences, such as funding for advanced microscopes and other imaging infrastructure, is maintained. Bioimaging is the most needed research infrastructure in life sciences in Finland. Every year, approx. 1,200 researchers use and depend on the services of the main biological imaging units of Turku, Helsinki and Oulu. Approximately 400 researchers receive special training, and 200 scientific publications are produced. These services are also critical in areas such as COVID-19-research, and used also in environmental research. It is estimated that globally, 70% of life science top publications depend on advanced light microscopy.