McCrone Research Institute

McCrone is a non-​profit research institute that was founded in 1960 for a rather specific purpose: to enhance the utility and applications of light and electron microscopy in all areas of science. In other words, they’re all about microscopes. McCrone offers courses, conferences and publications germane to the training of researchers to better apply microscopy to their work. This is unique, because most research institutes focus on an area of study rather than a technique, but McCrone desires instead to educate scientists in how to work better with microscopy and they do this in the same humble building they’ve been in since their founding, near some of Chicago’s most-​respected medical research and clinical institutions but seperate, independent, and while cutting-​edge, still quaint (in a good way) in their dedication to the noble microsope.
What McCrone does is really a national service: microscopy is still in a process of evolution and involves complex techniques that are best passed by mentor to student in a lab setting or, as McCrone does, taught in specific coursework. That type of coursework isn’t something you get in most dedicated graduate programs be these in microbiology, neuroscience, materials engineering or whatever else. Having a dedicated institution offering this training and backing it with decades of expertise is a real benefit to science in general.