The Nikon Fellowship at MBL: Celebrating Twenty Years of Scientific Discovery and Collaboration

November 4, 2010
This year, Nikon Instruments, Inc. and the renowned Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Nikon, MBL Fellowship collaboration. For two decades, this partnership has helped to bring some of the world’s foremost minds in imaging and microscopy together with the most cutting-edge scientific technology of the day. The Nikon Fellowship at MBL has provided a top scientist each year with the opportunity to spend a summer at the MBL campus and study their most pressing research questions with open access to the latest technologies Nikon has to offer. This unique arrangement has paved the way for many exciting discoveries and important breakthroughs, including advancements in super-resolution and single-cell imaging, just to name a few.

The names of Nikon Fellows reads like a “Who’s Who” of the scientific universe: Vladimir Gelfand , head of the lab and Professor at Northwestern University; Ron Vale , Professor and Chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology and Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of California, San Francisco; Tim Mitchison of the prestigious Mitchison Lab at Harvard University; Edward Salmon , head of the noted Salmon Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Paul Selvin , the 2010 recipient of the Nikon Fellowship, and member of the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are just some of the well-known names to have studied at MBL as a Nikon Fellow.

Dr. Selvin, whose background as one of the world’s leaders in studying single-molecule imaging makes him one of the most unique fellows in Nikon’s history, described his experience as one of the best of his career. Ahead of his arrival at MBL, Dr. Selvin worked closely with the Nikon team to build a microscope perfectly tailored to his research goals in single-molecule imaging so that he could begin work immediately. He says, “Nikon provided me carte blanche to its experts in order to make a system specifically customized to my needs. The team worked exhaustively to create an incredibly sophisticated single-molecule microscope – all before I even stepped foot on campus. The spirit of collaboration continued once I arrived at MBL, when I entered into countless talks with other scientists outside of my discipline, conversations which led to lines of thinking that I never would have considered otherwise. It is simply an experience that you can’t get anywhere else, and my time as a Nikon Fellow will be something that will inform my work for years to come.”

Dr. Tim Mitchison, the first Nikon Fellow and one of its most illustrious alumni, also recalls an experience that highly influenced his career. “My time at MBL as a Nikon Fellow was wonderful time. It was the first time I met and worked with Ted Salmon face to face, a partnership that blossomed into a still-ongoing long-term collaboration and friendship. It was also a time of great experimentation and discovery and it connected me with a number of great scientists, many of whom I keep in touch with to this day.”

Dr. Vladimir Gelfand, the 1993 Fellow, describes a similar experience. “I still keep in touch with many of the colleagues and scientists I met during my time at MBL,” he says. “MBL is a special place, where people from all over the world come to study and share their knowledge and expertise. That Nikon gives scientists the opportunity to be in this environment, meet people we ordinarily wouldn’t, and create relationships that can last our entire careers is extraordinary.” Dr. Gelfand also still uses the very same microscope he worked with as a Nikon Fellow, proving it’s not just the relationships that last after a scientist’s time at MBL is done.

The high level of work Nikon Fellows conduct at MBL continues once they return to their own labs and share their equipment and conclusions with their colleagues. The cutting-edge research techniques and technology used at MBL are provided to the broader scientific community, paving the way for discoveries that add to the larger body of scientific knowledge. Dr. Gary Borisy, Director and CEO of MBL, likens the sharing of these thoughts and processes at MBL to a scientific nucleus. “From this core, the advancements in technology and ideas spread out to the larger community, fostering innovation and furthering the limits of what is possible and what we know.”

He says that Nikon’s ongoing dedication to ensuring this happens is a crucial part of why the collaboration remains fruitful. “Nikon’s commitment to MBL – which includes not just its sending of scientists to our campus, but also generous donation of equipment and microscopes – allows for incredible brain power to combine with great innovation,” he says. “What happens here shapes not just the future of technological development but all of science.”

That fact is hard to dispute. Thanks to the work of Nikon Fellows working alongside other collaborators, the scientific community now has such incredible technologies as super-resolution imaging – including STORM and PALM. Dr. Selvin’s work in single-cell imaging and FIONA over the summer of 2010 is also likely to cause great reverberations once his conclusions and technologies are shared with others in the field.

Nikon is proud to be an avid supporter of the MBL and do its part to support the larger scientific community. The company looks forward to continuing its Fellowship for the next 20 years – and many more to come.

Nikon Instruments MBL Fellows list

1990 Tim Mitchison, Harvard Medical School
1991 Ron Vale, University of California, San Francisco
1991 Stephen Smith, Stanford
1992 Andreas Stemmer, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich
1993 Vladimir Gelfand, Northwestern University
1994 Andrew Murray, Harvard University
1995 John Murray, University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine
1996 Jeff Lichtman, Harvard University
1997 Gregg Gundersen, Columbia University
1998 James Q. Zheng, Emory University
1999 Edward Salmon, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2000 Peter Saggau, Baylor College of Medicine
2001 Fred Chang, Columbia University Medical Center
2002 Jan Ellenberg, European Molecular Biology Lab, Heidelberg Germany
2003 Alexey Khodjakov, Wadsworth Center, NYS Department of Health
2004 Matthew Larkum, University of Bern, Switzerland
2005 Jason Swedlow, University of Dundee (UK)
2006 Jonathon Pines, University of Cambridge (UK), Gurdon Institute
2007 Kerry Bloom, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2008 Gaudenz Danuser, Harvard Medical School
2009 Steano Tiozzo, University of California, Santa Barbara
2010 Paul Selvin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign