Builders

The BINA Builders Working Group aims to create a diverse and inclusive community of builders, adopters, and users of custom microscopes and microscopy tools. Currently, many of these techniques are developed in research groups and, despite their tremendous usefulness to the broader community, few get disseminated or adopted outside the developing group. The Builders Working Group wants to bring together builders, adopters, users, and industrial representatives to publicize and discuss microscope designs and tools, exchange build information for existing designs, and provide a forum to incubate new design ideas. Primarily, we plan to:

• Organize events (such as online seminars or roundtable discussions) to discuss technologies and standards, showcase custom builds, provide tutorials, etc.
• Promote online build repositories and open-hardware approaches where microscope builds, designs, and tools can be ‘publicized’ and ‘searched’.
• Provide an online forum for discussion of Builders Group events, custom microscope builds and tools, and general topics of interest to builders and adopters.
• Work closely with other BINA working groups to help guide efforts on standardization, best practices, training, dissemination, etc.