The Academy of Finland granted 1.6 million euros for the new quantitative Chemically-Specific Imaging (qCSI) infrastructure for material and life sciences.
qCSI was one of the new infrastructures that received funding in the decision of the Academy of Finland to grant a total of 13 million euros for building and developing national research infrastructures. The qCSI infrastructure, led by prof. Clare Stracharn (Univ. Helsinki), will be a world-class open-access infrastructure for advanced vibrational imaging in material and life sciences, involving pharmaceuticals, nanomaterials, foods, cells and tissues.
The funding allows the consortium to develop two new open-access vibrational imaging instruments: a fast multiplex coherent Raman microscope at the University of Helsinki, and a near-field nanospectroscopy microscope at the University of Jyväskylä. The application of the instruments is strengthened by an open-access spectral data analysis and image generation platform developed by the LUT University.