Meet the team
Who are we?
Bugscope is run by the Imaging Technology Group at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois. This collection of imaging specialists and microscopists provides state-of-the-art imaging facilities to campus researchers. Entomology students from the University also frequently join our live sessions to describe the insects.
The Bugscope Team
Catherine L. Wallace View Catherine L. Wallace in Beckman directory
Joined Bugscope in 2005 as our student publicist, encouraging news outlets near each school to cover sessions. Her work resulted in a resurgence of national attention about Bugscope. She now uses and maintains the Microscopy Suite's instruments full-time, sets up sessions, and chats with the students.
Stephanie Peyton View Stephanie Peyton in Beckman directory
Joined the Imaging Technology Group in 2018, and Bugscope in 2019. She manages scheduling, bug collection and preparation, and anything else that's needed to keep the microscope nerds at their microscopes: equipment purchasing, finances, web design, etc. Teppie's favorite arachnids are mites that take rides on bugs.
T Josek View T Josek in Beckman directory
Joined the Imaging Technology Group and Bugscope in 2022, but they have been helping with Bugscope since 2014 as a student volunteer while working on their master's. They since went on to get their Ph.D. in Entomology and are now a microscopist here full time. T is passionate about teaching and looking forward to helping develop more structured curriculum for Bugscope. T's favorite insect is the acorn weevil.
Alumni
Bugscope was conceived in 1998 by Clint Potter and Bridget Carragher, to provide sustainable web-based remote access to sophisticated scientific instrumentation for K-12 classrooms worldwide. It built on lessons learned from the Chickscope Project, as well as the implementation of web access to our transmission electron microscope.
Many others have been involved with Bugscope over the years but have moved on to new things.
- Scott J. Robinson, Past Microscopy Suite Manager and Bugscope Manager
- Umesh Thakkar, Bugscope education outreach
- Camille Goudeseune, Software developer
- Chas Conway, BugOps lead, 2007 software redesign
- Deb Aronson, publicity
- Laura Bender, publicity
- Bridget Carragher, project conception and direction
- Liana Carroll, entomology
- Martin Ceperley, BugOps
- Jessica Eckstein, educational evaluation
- Josh C. Gibson, entomology
- Ben Grosser, project direction and software development
- Lori Heil, scheduling
- Nick Kisseberth, server programming
- Alex Lazarevich, sysadmin, technical lead
- Claudi Lieberwirth, BugOps
- Ben Miller, client/server programming
- Clint Potter, project conception and direction
- Annie Ray, entomology
- Kendra Reasor, scheduling
- Joe Sapp, BugOps
- Philippa Soskin, BugOps
- David Stone, BugOps high school teacher
- Daniel Weber, BugOps and software development
- Josie Wiegel, BugOps
- Michelle Wetzler, publicity
Software
Bugscope is built as a LAMP stack, using the Javascript libraries Prototype and CalendarView, and the PHP library iCalcreator. It also uses Ruby, mailutils, git, Google's Geocoding API, fail2ban, FEI's proprietary microscope control API, and a host of other utilities.
Funding
Bugscope was initially funded by Submeta and the Illinois Consolidated Telephone Company. Purchasing the microscope was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Beckman Institute. Additional support was provided by IBM's Shared University Research Program, and the Informix for Innovation Software Grant Program.