SPMicros was born in the year 1966 and since then the Society has promoted 46 annual Congresses. These have been long recognized as a nursery for young scientists with a special interest in microscopy. The meetings of the Society, fostered by high level scientists like David Ferreira and Teixeira da Silva, to mention only the ones that have left us this year, were once marked by a exigent standard of quality that left a lasting mark in all of us.
Science in Portugal has experienced a marked period of growth in the last years and this growth has significantly influenced the activity of the Society. We all experienced a growing interest in microscopy from our colleagues from other disciplines that seek cooperation with microscopists in their research projects. An important part of the communications to this Congress directly reflect this cooperation, illustrating the applications of microscopy to a wide variety of problems in a multidisciplinary context.
Materials Science has been quick in adopting electron microscopy in Portugal and achieved an expression that matches the Life Sciences, a characteristic that is clearly seen in the relative distribution of the abstracts from this and previous meetings, between Materials and Life sciences.
For the first time in Portugal the application of microscopy to areas of research such as Archeology were featured in our Congress.
Although the communications are still strongly biased towards electron microscopy, as the Society continues the activity of the original Portuguese Society for Electron Microscopy, other methods like confocal and plain light microscopy, that are now within the scope of activity of the Society, have begun to be represented.
All this interest and diversification are encouraging for us and show that the importance of microscopy is being increasingly recognized among colleagues from other disciplines. Being a demanding method, the meetings of the Society are again crucial for the dissemination of knowledge about microscopy and their applications.
SPMicros aims to help and support all those that want to use microscopy in their research and the annual Congress is now a very powerful tool for achievement of this objective, particularly in topics that concern young scientists and interested colleagues from other fields.
The Board of Directors wants to thank and congratulate all participants for the vibrant interest and overall high quality of their presentations, and have a special word of gratitude towards our invited guests who showed some of the amazing advances that are under active development in the field and that are placing microscopy again in the forefront of scientific advances.
