Event Review: EMC2024

The 17th European Microscopy Congress (EMC2024) took place at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, from 26-30 August 2024 with an attendance of 2,500 registrants from at least 51 countries, who had the opportunity to hear from researchers at various career levels from both academia and industry

Eight years have passed since the latest EMC (Lyon, 2016); in the meantime, the COVID-19 pandemic most regrettably caused a last-minute cancellation of the attempted organised EMC2020 in Copenhagen. Accordingly, EMC2024 was planned in the wake of the pandemic at a time when we did not know whether physical conferences would ever happen again – at least to the same extent we have grown used to in the past. Fortunately, in Copenhagen 2024, it seemed as if all the unpleasant memories of the past pandemic were almost forgotten, even though most of the world was in lockdown less than three years before. Some prayers must have been taken into consideration, because even the late August weather was perfect for outdoor social activities.

The 1,360 submitted abstracts for the three main symposia complemented the impressive number of registrants and paved the road for an extensive and dynamic conference programme spanning advances in Life Sciences, Physical Science, and Instrumentation & Methodology. Accordingly, EMC2024 featured six parallel tracks with 35 scientific sessions, giving room for 438 oral presentations, 50 invited speakers, and five plenary and 772 poster presentations.

Approximately 250 registrants decided to arrive early and attend one of the seven pre-conference workshops offered on the Sunday. However, it wasn’t just the pre-conference workshop students who decided to arrive in good time, because the Welcome Reception on Sunday evening saw more than 1,300 conference delegates at the truly memorable event.

The spacious conference hall – shaped to host all EMC2024 scientific activities for the five full days − consisted of a plenary lecture theatre seating 1,500 delegates; five breakaway theatres with a capacity of 350 each; and a generous poster area with a capacity of 400 posters. The trade exhibition was the centrepiece of the hall, featuring many of the world’s leading companies in the field. More than 500 registrants from the attending companies were on hand to showcase their latest cutting-edge instrumentation and accessories, and EMC2024 warmly welcomed a total of 105 exhibitors including ten Open Science contributions and the two EMC2028 bidders: Brno, Czech Republic, and Barcelona, Spain. During the lunch breaks the five breakaway theatres were generously booked by the vendors for introduction and presentations of new technologies.

On Thursday evening, the Conference dinner at the Bella Center was jam-packed to capacity with 800 seated guests, who enjoyed a three-course dinner accompanied by a full jazz big band in Sinatra style. The dance floor was quickly packed with happy conference delegates.

Myriad feedback indicated that all attendants – academia and vendors − had a great, busy and productive time at EMC2024. Taken into consideration that the pandemic with lockdown precautions had just been left behind us, my personal outstanding memory was probably the great pleasure of seeing the buzzing activity in the conference hall: colleagues finally catching up in person; the impressive activity with all the vendors’ booths; and four days of truly amazing activity in the poster-sessions. There were handshakes and even hugs – who would have believed this possible again just three years ago?

The 18th European Microscopical Congress (EMC2028) will be organised by the Spanish Microscopy Society in Barcelona, Spain, from 18-22 September 2028. We are all looking forward for the continuation of this important cornerstone in the microscopy scientific world.

Klaus Qvortrup EMC2024, Conference Chair