Inside a $19 million effort to expand connectome technology

Davi Bock wants to bring the power of volume electron microscopy (EM) to the people.

The method’s ability to capture structural details at high resolution on a huge scale has powered the explosion of connectomics—Bock’s lab, then at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus, used the technique to produce the 21 million images that became FlyWire , a complete wiring diagram of the Drosophila brain published in 2024.

This technical prowess is expensive, and few labs can afford the necessary equipment—but they could soon obtain the data.

Last month, Bock received a $19 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to design a “National Connectomics and Ultrastructure Volume Observatory.” Rather than mapping larger and more ambitious connectomes, the observatory intends to take on smaller projects—requested by outside investigators—that use volume EM to examine how biological structures change in different contexts.