The Japanese Society of Electron Microscopy Technology for Medicine and Biology (JSEMTMB) was founded for the "advancement of electron microscopy technology and research". The society has served as an active organization for developing and spreading the technology to the world. And it is a place of the exchange of information sources among members. The members are mainly composed of technical experts and researchers in the field of medicine and biology together with several members of developers and operators.
At the moment the society has approximately 400 ordinary members of technical experts and researchers in many fields; medicine, biology, food, agriculture, dentistry and veterinary sciences in universities, clinical pathology and clinical examination in hospitals, medical institutes, enterprises of electron microscope and of the related apparatus, and pharmaceutical companies.
Scientific meeting has been held annually in Japan. The topical symposia, oral and poster sessions, and an exhibition of EM companies are included within the 3 day general meeting. As international activities, the society has held the international meeting, International Symposium of Electron Microscopy for Medicine and Biology (ISEM), supported by WHO in Korea, 1990 (1ISEM), China, 1993 (2ISEM), Taiwan, 1995 (3ISEM), at Taegu, Korea, 1999 (4ISEM), at Hubai, China in 2005 (5ISEM). The 6ISEM will be held at Kobe, Japan on September, 2009. Further, a group of JSEMTMB members will participate in Asia Pacific Microscopy Conference (APMC9) in Jeju, Korea on September 2008.
Wet labs of EM technical course have been held annually. Technical classes for basic transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), as well as classes for the applied EM are included within the 3 day course. The participants will attend lectures and practice techniques at the wet lab by themselves under the guidance of the instructors. The participants lodge together for cultivation of mutual friendship with instructors during the course.
The society annually publishes the dual journals in Japanese or English, "Journal of Electron Microscopy Technology for Medicine and Biology", and the transactions in Japanese partially, "Kaiintsushin". The society also publishes several technical textbooks written in Japanese. The society is planning to publish journals and transactions in English and to translate some published technical textbooks to English. We hope we could have a close relation with every technical expert and researcher in the world to improve techniques on electron microscopy.
JSEMTMB society manages a service system through this home page to solve technical problems from the members concerning tissue processing, operation of equipment, photography and so on. The society has promoted EM technology research grants. The applicants of JSEMTMB members are judged by the committee, and then the candidates receive the grant-in-aid by JSEMTMB society. They have to present their study results at the JSEMTMB annual meeting and then submit a paper to the JSEMTMB Journal. The members whose papers on EM technology researches are published by the Journal, or members who made tremendous efforts to develop the society further, are eligible to receive awards. The prize winners who are selected by the committee will receive the prize at an award ceremony at the annual meeting.
JSEMTMB has the board of directors as follows;Sin-ichi Izumi (President), Kazutoshi Unnno, Norio Ozeki, Hiroaki Kawazato, Takayuki Kurihara, Hironori Koga, Hiroyuki Sasaki, Tsuneo Takahashi, Shogo Muranaka, Sumio Nakamura, Noriko Nemto, Hideaki Hasegawa, Takashi Fujiwara, PyonYan Park, Yasuaki Hotta, and Ieharu Yamazaki.