Seventeen Labs Designated as Campus Research Core Facilities at UC Davis
The Research Core Facilities Program was launched in 2015 by the Office of Research to oversee and strengthen the core research infrastructure at UC Davis.
As part of this charter, the program has initiated a process to designate certain laboratories across the university that provide shared research services as Campus Research Core Facilities. This designation provides a strategic platform to ensure state-of-the-art research capabilities are provided in a cost-efficient manner. The designated laboratories are expected to develop and represent best practices for core facility operation and emerge as centers of excellence for the university.
Each lab designated as a Campus Research Core Facility will receive dedicated support from the program, including access to facility management software, marketing, and assistance with external contracting and negotiations. In addition, each facility is eligible for financial support for personnel and equipment.
The Research Core Facilities Program has designated the following laboratories as Campus Research Core Facilities:
- Bioinformatics Core
- Campus Mass Spectrometry Facility
- Center for Molecular and Genomic Imaging
- College of Biological Sciences DNA Sequencing Facility
- Controlled Environment Facility
- DNA Technologies and Expression Analysis Cores
- Biological Electron Microscopy Facility
- Flow Cytometry Shared Resource Laboratory
- Health Sciences District Advanced Imaging Facility
- Imaging Research Center
- Interdisciplinary Center for Inductively-Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry
- Keck Spectral Imaging Facility
- Light Microscopy Imaging Facility, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology
- Mouse Biology Program
- Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility
- Proteomics Core Facility
- West Coast Metabolomics Center
These facilities were selected from 26 applications received in response to a campus-wide solicitation. An independent review panel consisting of faculty representing each college and professional school evaluated the applications. One key criterion for the core facilities is that they demonstrate a broad interdisciplinary impact, serving researchers from at least three colleges or professional schools.
This initial group will serve as the model cohort in developing an improved support structure for shared research facilities at UC Davis. Opportunities for additional facilities to apply for the designation will be made available in the future.
Launch of New Tool to Search for Instruments and Services
The Research Core Facilities Program has developed a dynamic database to assist researchers with finding instruments and services at laboratories across the campus. This tool provides inventory for over 450 devices and tests, searchable by keyword. The list of equipment will continue to grow as more facilities are added to the database.
About the Research Core Facilities Program
The Research Core Facilities Program was developed in response to a faculty-driven committee report that highlighted the need for strategic funding and oversight of laboratories providing research services, which have grown organically to include over 170 facilities across the campus. The mission of the program is to enable researchers at UC Davis to have access to the state-of-the-art technology for their scientific research, to streamline core facility administration while improving accountability and transparency, and to provide training opportunities for faculty, graduate students and staff.
The Research Core Facilities Program is led by Faculty Director Klaus van Benthem and Associate Director Julie Auger.
For more information on the program, visit cores.ucdavis.edu.