Some of the most important discoveries in materials science and structural biology come down to a simple question: Where, exactly, are the atoms? The arrangement of atoms determines nearly everything about how a material behaves in the real world—how strong it is, how it conducts electricity, how a battery stores energy, or how a drug binds to a cell.

To answer that question, scientists use transmission electron microscopes. Researchers at the Molecular Foundry, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), operate several of these microscopes, including some of the most advanced in the world, capable of imaging structures roughly half the size of a hydrogen atom (or 60 billion times smaller than you). This gives outside researchers access to equipment they wouldn’t otherwise have access to.

That access to complex equipment comes with a steep learning curve. As a user facility, the Molecular Foundry hosts scientists from universities, companies, and other institutions who don’t have access to the specialized electron microscopes at their home labs. Some visiting researchers arrive with a semester of coursework in electron microscopy basics, but still need weeks of hands-on training to run the lab’s more advanced techniques.