David Cheshire, 1946 - 2008

November 2008

It is with great regret that we have to announce the death, from cancer, of David Cheshire on Tuesday 25 November.

David, who was 62, had worked with the ‘Polaron’ range for an incredible 40 years. Starting in the very early days with the original Polaron Company, based in Watford, he was part of the growth of that company that took advantage of the advent and rapid growth in scanning electron microscopy (SEM). More recently, David was a key part of the team that formed Quorum Technologies Ltd in 2001 - following the acquisition of the Polaron product range from Thermo VG.

During the Thermo VG days and the early years of Quorum Technologies, David was the main contact for spares, service and technical support - having a seemingly encyclopaedic knowledge for every product and accessory we have ever made (and we have made many!).

However, David’s most significant contribution was in the development of a stream of innovative products - many of which are now standard in electron microscopy. He played a major role in the development of the first ‘cool’ sputter coater (E5100) and was a co-author of a landmark paper in 1976. This important innovation (the addition of a magnetic deflection system) paved the way for fine gain, high resolution sputtering which is now standard in most SEM laboratories. In those early days, David also worked on the first commercial critical point dryer (E3000) and numerous other successful products, including an automatic TEM grid stainer, various histology instruments and a wide range of vacuum coaters. In recent years he developed and helped make successful our PP2000T cryo-SEM.

David was an engineer to the core and many of his interests outside work reflected this. He made several high performance ‘kit cars’ and was, until recently, renovating two classic motorbikes. In his early days he also raced dragsters (a sport that is certainly not for the faint hearted!) and was a glider pilot.

David leaves a wife; Carol, a daughter, Lindsay, and two young grandchildren. He will be sadly missed.
 

Quorum Technologies Scholarship Winner 2008

August 2008

Hannah Jeffrey has won the Quorum Technologies Scholarship 2008 for her final-year project entitled ‘Corneal Reconstruction: Towards a Novel Synthetic Osteo-Odonto Keratoprosthesis (OOKP)’.

A Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery student at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Hannah undertook the project in the fourth year of her studies within the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences.

Hannah produced her project using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) for both elemental analysis and imaging of her specimens, together with complementary use of confocal microscopy, XRD and biochemical determinations of the biocompatibility of hydroxyapatite coatings deposited on carbon fabrics.

For more details on our Quorum Technologies Scholarship, visit the About Us section.

MicroScience Event 2008

July 2008

Quorum Technologies were present at London's ExCel for the third time at what has become Europe's premier microscopy event. We had a record number of visitors to our largest-ever stand, where we had a representative range of products on display.

For the first time, and in conjunction with Tescan®, who had kindly loaned us a VEGA II LMU, we were able to give live cryo-SEM demonstrations on all three days.

Our staff also took the opportunity to visit the exhibition and gain a greater appreciation of the vast range of products and technologies on display.