MSA's MegaBooth (Booth #258) provides many services for meeting attendees. The Internet Café offers free internet access. While you're waiting for a terminal, you can examine copies of recent microscopy books, for both adult microscopists and children. Sample DVDs of meeting tutorials are available for review. You can post a resume or job opening, or sign up for exhibitor tutorials. Free copies of Microscopy Today (MT) and Microscopy and Microanalysis are available. You can get information on MSA membership and MSA's technologist certification and undergraduate scholarship programs. Project MICRO, MSA's precollege outreach program and the Technologist Forum both have information desks.

The annual Microscopy & Microanalysis meeting has proven to be the premiere meeting for scientists, technologists, and students who use microscopy or microanalysis in their research. Microscopy & Microanalysis 2009 will be no exception! The 2009 Executive Program Committee, consisting of co-chairs from each of the participating societies, has assembled a diverse and comprehensive program that will address applications in both the biological and physical sciences as well as recent and emerging trends in instrumentation and techniques. As in 2008, special emphasis has been placed on attracting fresh content and new faces. Several symposia have been designed to expand beyond the boundaries of the interdisciplinary nature of the Microscopy & Microanalysis meetings, reflecting the increasing need for collaborations between physical and biological sciences.

Microscopy and Microanalysis would like to thank the following sponsors for their generous support of the M&M 2009 Meeting and EXPO. (Sponsors as of May 5, 2009)

Richmond, the center of it all! … A wonderful place to visit, live, work, and raise a family is centrally located two hours, by car, from the Atlantic Ocean, Washington DC and the Blue Ridge Mountains and within two hours, by plane, to cities from New York and Atlanta. Central Virginia is home to so much of our nation's heritage; but yet, a contemporary city with a quality of life and cost of living you will quickly appreciate in today's economy. It is the “Gem of the James River”, with many parks and scenic greenways. Thank you, Microscopy Society of America, for choosing Richmond in 2009 as host city for Microscopy and Microanalysis Convention.

The Presidents of the Microscopy Society of America, the Microbeam Analysis Society and the International Metallographic Society invite you to join them in Richmond for the 2009 Microscopy & Microanalysis meeting. This EXPO issue of Microscopy and Microanalysis provides you with full details of the scientific meeting and its ancilliary events, as well as giving valuable information about the many vendors who will be exhibiting their products at the meeting. Attendance at the meeting will provide you with a useful snapshot of the diverse activities taking place across the many scientific disciplines that currently utilize microscopy and microanalysis.

The 67th Annual Meeting of the Microscopy Society of America, held in conjunction with our co-sponsoring societies, will take place in Richmond, Virginia in late July. Now widely known as Microscopy and Microanalysis, this meeting provides the MSA membership with a useful overview of many diverse activities involving microscopy and microanalysis that are of topical interest. In addition to symposia devoted to a range of contemporary topics in the biological and physical sciences, as well as advances in instrumentation, the meeting program will include a set of “Back to Basics” Tutorials, and continuations of the highly successful In-Meeting Intensive Workshops, and the special “Family Affair”, which provides hands-on activities and demonstrations aimed at children of all ages. MSA Council is concerned to reach out to more people in the wider community who utilize microscopes of many shapes and forms in their daily activities, and these developments are just part of our ongoing educational and outreach efforts in this direction.

On behalf of the Microbeam Analysis Society (MAS), I welcome you to Richmond and Microscopy and Microanalysis 2009! This year we enter our fourteenth year in the agreement to jointly co-sponsor the annual meeting with the Microscopy Society of America (MSA), and our eighth year of meeting with the International Metallographic Society (IMS). Our technical program remains quite strong and diverse, a testament to what cooperation between the societies can accomplish. This year's program continues to offer a good blend of fundamentals, cutting edge technology and real world applications. I want to thank MSA Program Chair Janet Woodward, MSA Vice-Chair John Mansfield, MAS Co-Chair Luke Brewer, and IMS Co-Chair Fred Schmidt for constructing a program that has appeal to the novice as well as the expert. I would also like to recognize Stuart McKernan and Nestor Zaluzec for maintaining and guarding the program database, and Richard Edelmann, John Shields, and Charlie Lyman for all their efforts to publicize and produce our meeting materials.

On behalf of the International Metallographic Society, welcome to Richmond for Microscopy & Microanalysis 2009, the premier event in our scientific field. IMS is pleased to again join the Microscopy Society of America and the Microbeam Analysis Society to offer a unique combination of Scientific Content, Exhibitions and, the most fun of all, the gathering of our peers involved in the field of studying the very small. This meeting represents the 42nd Annual Event for IMS, and the eighth year that we have joined in the M&M Event.