Pleasantly surprised. I asked it "How deep can I image with multiphoton microscopy?" and "How many channels can I image with a confocal microscope?" (two common user questions). The answers, boiled down, were (correctly) "it depends," but gave a few useful details and then referred me to the core staff. It seems like this chatbot is correctly using the ability of AI to collate information from disparate sources, and not trying to use it to provide a definitive answer. Our expertise is largely in the nuances, along with creative problem solving, so I appreciate that they seem not to be trying to replicate that aspect of the job.
Original Message:
Sent: 01-29-2026 12:56
From: Michael Cammer
Subject: Core Website Examples
Briefly, the Chatbot was placed on our webpages circa June 30, 2025. The initial training was really bad. For instance, I asked it about AiryScan and it stated with assurance things that we cannot do in our core with AiryScan. Following our complaints, they claim the chatbot was then told to crawl specific URLs we provided. The results do appear better. This result is what you see now.
The AI is called Gecko. It runs on their servers. https://geckoengage.com/ I don't know anything about the cost or effort to set it up, although it appears to be a fixed LLM model that can also be told to be trained with a few additional URLs (or maybe with a folder full of Word docs or PDFs? I don't know.)
I'm trying to get access to all the prompts and full generated answers to assess how people are using it and whether the results are accurate, but I don't know if this will happen. A summary table IT gave us shows 206 prompts since June 30, 2025, so that would be a lot of reading since I can't use AI to check to what extent the answers are helpful and correct!
Michael Cammer, Sr Research Scientist, DART Microscopy Laboratory
NYU Langone Health, 540 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Office: RB (formerly Skirball) 4-102 -- call if door is locked (phone near elevators)
Office: 646-501-0567 Cell (voice only, not text): 914-309-3270 Michael.Cammer@med.nyu.edu
http://nyulmc.org/micros http://microscopynotes.com/
Scheduling the time you want is far more reliable by phone call. Why not provide your phone number?
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Original Message:
Sent: 1/28/2026 10:10:00 AM
From: James Van Ee
Subject: RE: Core Website Examples
Like others, I was not disappointed with it. In particular I asked "I am doing an experiment using an RNAscope kit. what microscopes can I use to image the samples?" and it seemed to know what I was talking about, providing a subset list of scopes and some caveats/considerations with a recommendation to contact the staff (with contact details).
We have had some casual discussions and even some small experiments around something like this. What I am really curious about is what you can see on the back end about the interactions and use by your customers or potential customers. A big question is whether it is worth the effort to build and monitor compared to the ways we currently provide information. I think it is a matter of time before this sort of interaction is more or less expected from the community, but it boils down to whether or not it is worth the effort at this time.
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James Van Ee
Associate Director
Cornell University, Institute of Biotechnology
Ithaca NY
Original Message:
Sent: 01-27-2026 10:37
From: Michael Cammer
Subject: Core Website Examples
This doesn't directly answer your question, but I'm curious what people think about this feature which was added to our official website by the institution.
There is little chatbot icon which, depending what platform you are viewing on, is probably in the upper right or lower right of
https://med.nyu.edu/research/scientific-cores-shared-resources/microscopy-laboratory
This is a LLM. Curious what people think. You could try asking it about specific experiments, technologies, or whatever.
Cheers-
Michael Cammer, Sr Research Scientist, DART Microscopy Laboratory
NYU Langone Health, 540 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Office: RB (formerly Skirball) 4-102 -- call if door is locked (phone near elevators)
Office: 646-501-0567 Cell (voice only, not text): 914-309-3270 Michael.Cammer@med.nyu.edu
http://nyulmc.org/micros http://microscopynotes.com/
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Michael Cammer
Sr. Research Scientist
NYU School of Medicine Langone Medical Center
New York NY
Original Message:
Sent: 01-23-2026 12:36
From: Andy Chitty
Subject: Core Website Examples
Hi Folks,
I'm reaching out to see if you have examples of exemplary core program websites that you like - In particular, ones that list multiple cores and shared resources as a sort of cores home page that represents the core program well, has functionality, etc. Also, if there are individual core sites you like, that'd be a plus. Any comments about what you like about the sites would also be most welcome.
Thanks!
Andy
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Andy Chitty
Executive Director, MGB Research Cores
Mass General Brigham
MA
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