Events

UNC-Chapel Hill has scores of shared core facilities, and we want to introduce new users to these facilities, increase the number of users, and facilitate sophisticated uses of the cores. Vice Chancellor Tony Waldrop and School of Medicine Executive Associate Dean Bill Marzluff have created a program in which core facilities will be compensated on an hourly basis for conducting customized training for investigators. This initiative is NOT limited to the School of Medicine; it is extended throughout the entire University.

If you are interested in working with a core facilities director to learn specific skills, please first get in touch with that person and see if this is feasible. (You can find a contact list of UNC core facilities at http://www.med.unc.edu/roadmap/core/contact.htm.) Together determine an approximate number of hours this will take. Then email karen_stone@med.unc.edu with the following information:

- your name, title, and department or school
- the core facility you wish to work with
- the approximate number of hours you and the core director think will be needed
- whether or not you think this training could effectively be done in a small group rather than one-on-one
- for fellows and graduate students, a short note of support for this activity from their mentors
- a brief statement about how this training will advance your research; please be as specific as you can

The fine print:
1. Some core facilities require all potential users to be trained on the equipment before they can use it; others already do training and charge for it. This program will not fund these kinds of training.

2. Some cores don’t let anyone but their own staff use their equipment. In these cases, the program will pay for training in such issues as sample preparation and reasonable expectations of the technology for investigators interested in learning more about these cores.

3. Some cores are substantially supported by centers, departments, and grants. If the core is accessible to people working outside the group that funds it, payment for training will be limited to people outside those entities, i.e., this program will not fund training of investigators who are already members of the sponsoring entities.

4. Funding for the program is limited, and participation by labs, investigators, and core facilities will of necessity be limited as well, i.e., we will spread the resources around.

5. In many cases, working with small groups would be far more efficient than one-on-one training, and we will arrange that where possible. The core director will decide how many people s/he is able to work with at once.

We expect this program to be very popular and therefore urge you to act soon if you wish to participate.