A brief history of the octopus imaging facility to celebrate its 10th anniversary

Abstract

Summary Octopus (Optics Clustered to OutPut Unique Solutions) celebrated in June 2020 its 10th birthday. Based at Harwell, near Oxford, Octopus is an open access, peer reviewed, national imaging facility that offers successful U.K. applicants supported access to single molecule imaging, confocal microscopy, several flavours of superresolution imaging, light sheet microscopy, optical trapping and cryoscanning electron microscopy. Managed by a multidisciplinary team, Octopus has so far assisted >100 groups of U.K. and international researchers. Cross‐fertilisation across fields proved to be a strong propeller of success underpinned by combining access to top‐end instrumentation with a strong programme of imaging hardware and software developments. How Octopus was born, and highlights of the multidisciplinary output produced during its 10‐year journey are reviewed below, with the aim of celebrating a myriad of collaborations with the U.K. scientific community, and reflecting on their scientific and societal impact.