Over the past year, a review has been conducted of the operations, services, usage, and utilization rates of the faculty's nine core facilities. Four of these are located at the Department of Clinical Science (K2): Genomics, Metabolomics, Flow Cytometry, and the Research Unit for Health Surveys (FHU). The Department of Biomedicine (IBM) has three core facilities: Proteomics (PROBE), the Molecular Imaging Center (MIC), and Biophysics, Structural Biology and Screening (BiSS). The Department of Clinical Medicine (K1) hosts the Animal Facility, and the Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care (IGS) has a core facility for biostatistics and data analysis (BIOS).
The purpose of having core facilities is to provide researchers at the faculty with access to advanced research infrastructure, specialized methodological expertise, and professional support. These are resources that are important across research groups but are costly to invest in and operate. The facilities contribute to high scientific quality, strengthen education and capacity building, and are an important factor in securing external research funding.
The services offered by the core facilities must evolve in line with the needs of the faculty’s research groups. These core facilities are largely financed through user fees. For sustainable operation and to maintain a competitive advantage, it is important that the core facilities provide services that many of our research groups need and cannot easily perform themselves, or that can be delivered better and more cost-effectively than by commercial providers.
Infrastructure funding from the faculty is one way of renewing and strengthening these services. In November, the faculty will assess the allocation of funds for equipment costing more than NOK 500,000 and intended for use by a broad range of faculty researchers. Spatial proteomics is a highly requested service at the Flow Cytometry Core Facility. From K2's side, we have therefore submitted a request for a new instrument that can perform such analyses, while also enabling spatial transcriptomics analyses.
The review of core facilities provides a good overview of the existing services and operations of K2's core facilities. Going forward, we must consider how these services can be updated in line with the needs of our research groups. Input from users, that is, all K2 research groups, is highly encouraged. K2 needs core facilities that provide services beneficial to many research groups at a competitive price.
I wish everyone a pleasant weekend!
