Hey all, So next year on 15th January at 16:00 we need to host a meeting for the MUW “Medical Imaging Platfrom”s, Microscopy and Advanced Optical Imaging (MAOI) node. Idea is that people in node get together for a couple of presentations (these are all folks doing stuff similar or tangential to us, like OCT, Raman, photoacoustics etc.). Block the date.. I will also put you on mailing list for send out. I will need a bit of help arranging coffee and cakes. We basically want to revitalize this node ( for which I am apparently speaker for together with Wolfgang Drexler – the OCT guy). While politically important (to bring money to our work and position ourselves strategically in existing research schemes), I think this can be quite beneficial on several levels (or else I would try and squeeze my way out of any such social obligations!). My idea is basically to get all the optics folks in MUW (will also invite ones from Vienna Biocenter, Technical Uni and Uni Vienna) to get to know each other personally. I think this is super useful not only for scientific collaborations but also for building connections, and also say if you quickly need some optical component you don’t have handy but want to try something with, or want to brainstorm an idea they may know more about, etc. The long term idea is to have these meetings quite regularly (so can really form kind of club) and have people in each present recently published papers or preprints to discuss followed by social mingling (and drinks/food covered by medical imaging platform 😊). Well, let’s see how it goes. All the best, Kareem