FAST-EM – Fast Accessible Serial Transmission EM

Mapping the complete wiring diagram of a brain—every neuron and every connection—currently requires months of imaging and thousands of pounds per sample. This project aims to slash both the time and cost by redesigning a specialised electron microscopy technique called GridTape TEM. The problem is straightforward: the only way to get a complete connectome (a full map of neural connections) is electron microscopy, but existing methods are too slow and expensive to scale beyond a handful of tiny samples. This keeps researchers from comparing brains across individuals or studying larger animals like lizards. The team will remove the need for costly support films that coat each sample, and redesign the imaging process to minimise slow, expensive stage movements. Crucially, they are designing the system to work on standard transmission electron microscopes already sitting in labs worldwide, not just on custom-built machines. If successful, this would make high-throughput brain mapping accessible to many more labs. The immediate impact is on fundamental neuroscience—researchers could finally map entire brains of honeybees or geckos, revealing how neural circuits evolve and function. There is no direct daily-life application here; this is curiosity-driven science. But past work in connectomics has already informed artificial neural networks and neurological disease models, so a cheaper, faster method could accelerate those unexpected payoffs.