Hi Marty - I have not heard anything about this with regard to the NIH. But the concept is not a new one. We are working at UC to centralize all our core facilities administratively but not physically at this point. It has been an ongoing process for the last year and last August my position changed so that I actually oversee the management of 15 cores in our institution. We have physically consolidated some of our facilities into "supercores" with common themes. One example is our Immunology Applications Core Facility. It combines flow cytometry, monoclonal antibody production and immunohistochemistry. Another example was the consolidation of DNA sequencing and genotyping facilities which developed independently here. I do not believe that it is possible to physically consolidate all facilities unless a new building is also going to be provided by the NIH. But certainly, administrative consolidation leads to more efficient use of overhead to maintain the facilities, prevention of duplication of equipment and efficient use of equipment that is purchased with government funds. It only makes sense to attempt to use 100% of an instrument's capacity rather than having it sit idle for any period of time. The other advantage of this structure from an institutional point of view, is that one administrative unit is aware of the needs of all of the facilities and can productively interact with funding units (Cancer Centers, Diabetes Centers, etc) as well as Development Offices for active philanthropic efforts to try to meet those needs of the facilities. I would be interested in any responses (gossip, rumors or innuendo) that you receive on this topic. Best wishes, Julie At 07:50 AM 6/24/2002 -0700, you wrote: >I have heard that the NIH is considering the idea of each institution >consolidating various instrumentation that it has funded into >"supercores" - one place, all the instruments, one set of management, >etc. > >Does anyone have any more information on this? Gossip, rumors, and >innuendo would also be appreciated. > >Marty > >-- >Marty Bigos >Director, Flow Core >Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology >Building 3 SFGH Rm 509 >415-695-3832
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jan 05 2003 - 19:26:14 EST