Description
Each year Microscopy Today presents ten awards to organizations or individuals who have launched or published innovations in microscopy or microanalysis. Winning products and methods are selected based on their usefulness to the microscopy community. The entries most likely to win are those that provide better, faster, easier, or entirely new methods of analysis using a microscope or microanalytical instrument.
Deadline
The annual deadline for completed forms is March 21 or the following Monday if this day falls on a weekend.
How to Submit
Fill out this form and submit it via our official submission site.
Please note: the submitter will be the sole correspondent concerning the application.
Notification of Award
Winners will be nofitifed on or around June 1.
Eligibility & Nominations Info
Entries will be accepted only for the following: (a) new commercial microscopy-related products that were first marketed in the previous calendar year or (b) new microscopy methods and inventions that were first published in peer-reviewed journals in the previous calendar year. While multiple entries from the same organization are allowed, a single company or individual cannot receive more than one award in a single year. Officers and editors of the Microscopy Society of America and their subcontractors are not eligible.
Entries may come from colleagues or as self-nominations. There are only four questions on the entry form. There is no charge to enter this competition.
Judging Criteria
The entries most likely to win are those that provide better, faster, easier, or entirely new methods of analysis using some type of microscope or microanalytical instrument.
A winning entry should show the innovation’s usefulness to the microscopy community via the clarity and completeness of Questions 7-10. Supporting information, such as scientific papers, patents, or data may be included as an appendix, but please organize these supplements into a single (pdf or zip) file to facilitate the transmission process. Related videos also may be included in zip file format.
Descriptive Evidence about Product or Method
Evidence types include data from a working instrument/method or a peer-reviewed publication. Photographs of the commercial product available for sale or a citation to the peer-reviewed article must be provided. Submission of photographs implies permission has been granted to publish the photographs in Microscopy Today.
2026 Winners
Abberior Instruments GmbH
for development of STEDYCON 2
Bruker Corporation
for development of eWARP
Centre d'Elaboration de Matériaux et d'Etudes Structurales-CNRS and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie
for development of Operando Electron Holography
Centre National de la Recherch Scientifique
for development of Nanosecond-Resolved Nanothermometry
Hummingbird Scientific and University of Minnesota
for development of Operando Plasma Transmission Electron Microscopy Sample Holder
Peking University
for development of 3I-SIM
TESCAN
for development of FemtoChisel
University of Tennessee Knoxville and Oxford Instrument Asylum Research
for development of a Machine learning-based reward-driven tuning of scanning probe microscopy
Previous Winners
Descriptions of winning products and methods are published in the September issue of Microscopy Today. View the magazine and previous issues here.