Core facilities and services

To achieve its goal of excellence in a competitive research environment, the CRCHUM has developed core facilities that respond to the needs of its researchers, support the CRCHUM's strategic priorities in scientific development and are consistently at the cutting edge of today's technology.

The facilities must adapt to new research environments, and, above all, they must adapt their service offer to the institutional needs. This can be done, for example, by introducing new equipment to the facility, starting a new service, or discontinuing a service.

The Core facility’s services and development are periodically evaluated according to the needs of the researchers and the feasibility in terms of internal expertise and the available budget.

The service offer of a core facility must at least meet criteria such as:

• Competitiveness: highly specialized services based on our strengths and in which we hold a competitive advantage;
• Accessibility to researchers: Cutting-edge technological core facilities that are essential to research programs and accessible to researchers and for which the acquisition of instruments through CFI or other grants requires optimized maintenance and a sustainable inventory of equipment;
• Long-term needs and development outlook: regular evaluation of the core facilities to ensure consistency with the evolution of the CRCHUM's research programs and their needs, while taking into account the evolution of the services offered by other local institutions and companies;
• Cost-sharing agreement: implementation of a budget system that enables access to the facilities by all researchers while ensuring the facilities' management and sustainability.

The development or improvement of a service falls under the responsibility of a researcher who holds an expertise in the fields of application of the core facility. This is often the researcher who obtained the equipment through a special grant (e.g., from the CFI) or any other funding method (e.g., via the Fondation du CHUM), or another CRCHUM researcher.

The integration of equipment within a core facility is carried out on a voluntary basis by the researcher who owns the equipment and in compliance with the conditions for obtaining the equipment (e.g., CFI general rules, other grants, or inter-institutional agreements). Integration is conditional on support from the CRCHUM. The core facility management and development planning are carried out by the Scientific Associate Director – fundamental and translational research and by the Operations Assistant Directorate. The Principal Manager, Scientific Performance and the Manager, Research and Core Facility Development are responsible for overall management and monitoring of day-to-day operations.

When one or more researchers wish to integrate their equipment into the core facility, the CRCHUM's management develops a strategy with the researcher(s) in order to establish equitable management for the stakeholders while respecting the facility's financial balance. This principle is based on the need for sustainable shared equipment inventories, the retention of qualified staff working on the facilities and the scientific needs of the researchers who are working to integrate their equipment into the core facility.

From the start, the CRCHUM makes financial investments to defray:

• the costs of service contracts and/or necessary repairs to equipment in the core facility's inventory and/or required consumables;
• some or all dedicated specialist staff who work in the core facility;
• the costs associated with the sale of core facility services (website, contracts office, brochure, awareness-raising conference, etc.) as well as the costs related to collecting revenues (i.e., CRCHUM finance).

In return, all core facilities personnel commit to an overall objective of financial balance for all core facilities (recovery of expenses). Every year, an evaluation of the performance for each core facility is analyzed to check its financial health, its competitiveness, to evaluate its scientific needs and to find solutions if necessary. In the event of a financial gain, the amounts will be reinvested into the facility. The CRCHUM also annually evaluates new requests for equipment or services related to emerging needs or the volume of service requests that the core facilities receive.

Roles

Scientific advisor (CS) and core facilities supervisors (RP)

The CRCHUM core facilities have different modalities and purposes. The services are grouped together because of the expertise of the CS and RP and the needs of the Centre's researchers. The priorities for the development of the facilities are established on the basis of:

1. the internal needs of the researchers (need to have easy and quick access to an internal service),
2.  the facilities that already exist in the network in order to avoid duplication.

The CSs and RPs are therefore responsible for maintaining high-performance equipment and services within the allocated budgets and for keeping abreast of new research avenues of research r innovative equipment, which will enable them to develop and optimize relevant leading-edge services.

Role of the Scientific Advisors

The role of the CSs is to provide specialized expertise to support the RP in his activities, to re-evaluate annually with the RP the services offered and to see to future development needs in order to offer at all times state-of-the-art research services, to participate in the promotion of the core facility (for research purposes) and to collaborate with the RP in the preparation of the annual budget.

Role of core facility’s supervisors (RP)

The role of the RP of each core facility is to develop and offer the services put in place, to provide assistance in the design of experiments and during sample analysis, to supervise, train and support the staff under his/her responsibility, if applicable, to advise on sample preparation and data analysis, to provide training, to provide documentation (letter, work plan, budget estimate) for a grant application, to manage the facility (preparation of the annual budget, performance monitoring, purchasing, invoicing), etc.

Clients of the core facilities consist of:

• Regular CRCHUM researchers, their employees, students and post-doctoral fellows;
• Non-regular CRCHUM researchers, their employees, students and post-doctoral fellows;
• External academic researchers, their employees, students and post-doctoral fellows; from local, national or international universities;
• Companies, with no affiliation to a university, that wish to undertake research activities.