AURORA!

It has been an eventful half year building the rig at Dr. Wierenga's electrophysiology laboratory, starting from scratch. Thanks to the helps, supports, and countless discussions and brainstorming sessions, things have been moving forward, though slowly.

Beginning of May this year, I started to build the rig at the empty spot of the lab.

I named the rig "AURORA".

I had to collect all sort of parts from different places, including the attic of the building.

Often it started with cleaning the old and dirty parts (left: a filter dial for the microscope)

Or finding and combining different parts, assembling them to make it work (right: microscope stage).

It started to have a shape. Slowly...

And within a month, I was able to do a patch clamp recording from human iNeurons prepared by my colleague, Dr. Eline van Hugte.

Still, there were more to do, installing optical systems, readjusting the settings, working on the stability of the recording, and etc etc.

Especially, the old manipulators and their controllers (right) were a huge headache.

I also had to find a right material to cover the rig to prevent the rig from the outside light, and I went to an open air fabric market in Utrecht .

Along the way, I ended up purchasing a 50m roll of silicone sheet while I only needed 50 cm of it. (Luckily, the secretary convinced the company that we can return it.) See the photo of me with a bitter smile, thinking I've just wasted 1,500EUR of my budget.

And installing the 23,000EUR high-speed high-resolution camera (30,000EUR with the accessories).

And finally, AURORA is here!

We had an open rig day on December 8th, inviting colleagues to explain how the neuron-computer interface system and all-optical setting on the rig work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0VCh_sF5K0

Here is a video clip of my colleagues participated the open rig day. Taken by the 30,000EUR camera.

I thank all my wonderful collaborators. And thank you all who have been supportive and helpful!