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Research Centers

The Smithsonian is one of the world’s foremost research centers in science, the arts, and the humanities. In addition to research pursued by the museums , the following facilities specialize in areas of inquiry spanning the globe and the farthest reaches of the universe.

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The Smithsonian is one of the world’s foremost research centers in science, the arts, and the humanities.

Core Facilities and Service Centers

Core Facilities or Service Centers are centralized shared research resources that provide access to instruments, technologies, services, and in many cases expert consultation and training to researchers. Across the Institute, there are more than 50 core facilities.

Core facilities generally recover their cost, or a portion of their cost, in the form of user fees that are charged to an investigator's grant, contract or, in some cases, discretionary funds. Because of this, they are subject to the Service Center Policy and associated Accounting and Operating Procedures .

Many of these facilities are available on a fee-for-service basis to all investigators. Others are supported by individual departments, specific grants or groups of investigators, and may also be available on a fee-for-service to the broader community when capacity permits, or on a collaborative basis.

Please send additions or updates to this listing to the VPR webmaster

Facility Areas

Animal modeling and clinical testing, cell culture and analysis, chemistry synthesis and analysis, data analysis and data management, fabrication, human subjects testing, imaging: animal modeling and clinical testing, instrument repair, materials production and analysis, technology r&d.

Animal Modeling and Clinical Testing
Facility	Location	Description
	76-044	The KI Zebrafish Core Facility was established to provide expertise to KI and MIT researchers who wish to utilize zebrafish as a model organism for any kind of research along with professional daily care of the animals and aquarium systems. The facility can meet a wide range of needs, from one-off experiments of limited scope, to long-term maintenance of dozens of transgenic and/or mutant lines.
(formerly ES Cell & Transgenic Animal Core Facility)	76-195	This shared resource of the Koch Institute provides fee-for-service support to all MIT investigators who utilize cultured ES cells or novel mouse models to study human diseases such as cancer. Services encompass embryonic stem cells, microinjections, repositories of reagent mice, and much more.

Cell Culture and Analysis
Facility	Location	Description
(formerly ES Cell & Transgenic Animal Core Facility)	76-195	This shared resource of the Koch Institute provides fee-for-service support to all MIT investigators who utilize cultured ES cells or novel mouse models to study human diseases such as cancer. Services encompass embryonic stem cells, microinjections, repositories of reagent mice, and much more.
	76-182	The Hope Babette Tang (1983) Histology Facility assists investigators in generating quality histological slides. We have the equipment and expertise to produce sections from frozen, paraffin-embedded, and resin-embedded tissues. The Hope Babetta Tang Histology facility produces routine hematoxylin and eosin stained slides, immunohistochemical, and special stains. With these tools, the investigator will be better able to evaluate the pathologic consequences of various mutations or treatments.
	46-1303	Allowing researchers to directly examine a wide variety of diseases directly in human cells, the iPS facility in the BCS complex will provide a powerful incentive for different labs to collaborate together and exchange ideas. This common facility will integrate the various research goals of members of the Picower and McGovern Institutes, and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. The various BCS, McGovern, and Picower laboratories have expertise and experience with dfferent experimental protocols which, when combined in a collective manner to the study of human cells, will result in accelerated progress in this novel, dynamic and competitive field.
	76-279 (Cell Sorting Lab); 76-273 (Analysis)	Provides KI and MIT researchers with technical expertise, training and access to sophisticated instrumentation, enabling and supporting the use of a wide range of flow cytometry techniques. This technology allows simultaneous multiparametric analysis of many thousands of cells per second, enabling trained researchers to rapidly analyze complex cell populations using benchtop analysis flow cytometers. High-speed assisted cell sorting services provide researchers with fast, objective and quantitative recording of fluorescent signals from individual cells combined with physical separation of cells of particular interest.
(formerly) High Throughput Screening Facility	76-047	The High Throughput Screening Facility provides automated screening capability to KI and MIT researchers, as well as access to curated small molecule and lentiviral shRNA (RNAi) libraries. The facility is equipped with an Arrayscan automated confocal high content screening microscope, Tecan Evo liquid handlers, plate washers, automated micoplate centrifuges, an automated plate reader, and automated CO2 incubators. The instruments can be used in either walk-up or automated modes using our robot arms for general screening or plate preparation. The facility provides assay development and screening services in both BL2 and BL2+ space, as well as consultation and training for researchers with specific needs or challenging problems

Chemistry Synthesis and Analysis
Facility	Location	Description
	68-470	The Biophysical Instrumentation Facility (BIF) houses instruments to elucidate macromolecular structure and interactions. The BIF instruments include a Sartorius Octet R8 BioLayer Interferometry instrument, Jasco J-1500 CD spectrometer, a Wyatt DynaPro NanoStar for dynamic light scattering, a MicroCal VP-ITC isothermal titration calorimeter, a Refeyn oneMP Mass Photometer and an Agilent HPLC with SEC-MALS. The BIF will soon be welcoming a Prometheus Panto nanoDSF with parallel DLS. The BIF is largely used by researchers in Chemistry, Biology, Biological Engineering and Chemical Engineering, but, is available to anyone on campus and beyond. The BIF is a BL1 facility. The facility manager is available to train new users and advise those considering the potential application of the instruments in the facility.
	76-181 (Biopolymers); 76-387 (Proteomics)	The Biopolymers & Proteomics Core Facility provides MIT researchers with integrated synthetic and analytical capabilities for biological materials, including DNA, proteins and nanoparticles. Services include routine Sanger DNA sequencing, mass spectrometry-based proteomics approaches for identification, characterization, or quantitation of proteins, MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, peptide synthesis and purification, and high-pressure liquid chromatographic analysis and purification.
	18-0090	The facility's function is to maintain a sufficient number and type of state-of-the-art major analytical instruments in order to support the ongoing research programs within the MIT Chemistry Department.
	54-1221; 54-1214	The MIT Electron Microprobe Facility serves as the centerpiece of analytical instrumentation used in EAPS for research and teaching activities in geochemistry, petrology and mineral physics. The instruments in the facility form part of the Center for Geochemical Analysis (CGA), which comprises six instrument-oriented facilities. The microprobe facility serves a broad spectrum of research scientists at MIT, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), neighboring universities, academic institutions and the industry. Analytical services are available for the faculty and professionals. User training is also available. An hourly fee is charged.
	Building NW14	The objectives of CMR are: to develop sophisticated technologies for magnetic resonance in the areas of solution-state NMR, solid-state NMR, electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), and dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP); to apply those technologies to biologically and medically significant research, both in-house and collaboratively; to operate a state-of-the-art instrument facility to serve needs of researchers in chemistry, biology, and medicine; and to openly disseminate and provide training in technological developments at the Center.
(website unresponsive as of October 2022)	54-918	EAPS operates quadrupole and multicollector sector mass spectrometers under the direction of Professor Ed Boyle. These instruments use a high temperature argon plasma to ionize elements from aqueous and gaseous samples prior to mass spectrometric analysis.
	18-0090	The Department of Chemistry Instrumentation Facility is the shared instrument facility for the Chemistry Department located in the sub-basement of the Camille Edouard Dreyfus Building on the main MIT campus. The facility's function is to maintain a sufficient number and type of state-of-the-art major analytical instruments in order to support the ongoing research programs within the MIT Chemistry Department.
	NE47-4F	Founded in 2002, the ISN is a result of the Army’s vision to explore the potential power of nanotechnology to enable unprecedented advances in capabilities for Soldier protection and survivability. To capitalize on this opportunity, the Army decided to create the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies as a university center for basic research on nanotechnology. ISN equipment and facilities are available as resources to members of the MIT community.
	18-393	Provides diagnosis, repair, modification, consultation, and education of laboratory equipment and electronic instrumentation in departmental laboratories. Also provides access to analyltical instruments. It is a resource specific to members of the Department of Chemistry.
	6-204	Researchers use the LBRC's resources to exploit laser-based spectroscopic techniques for medical applications such as the spectral diagnosis of disease, investigation of biophysical and biochemical properties of cells and tissues and development of novel imaging techniques.
	See website for locations.	The current equipment includes an Applied Biosystems/Sciex QStar Elite quadrupole time-of-flight, an Agilent 1100 LC-MSD TOF, an Agilent 6430 triple quadrupole mass spectrometer, and - our newest instrument - an Agilent 6530 quadrupole time-of-flight with a 1290 Infinity UHPLC system.
	13-4111, 4137, 4139, and 4151	Analytical techniques available include Auger spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation, Thermal Analysis techniques and Profilometry. A wide array of spectroscopy techniques, including UV-visible-near IR spectrophotometry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy.
(currently offline)	8-114	A state-of-the-art laboratory in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT for probing the properties and surfaces of engineering and biological materials at atomic and molecular length scales through mechanical contact.
	Building NW12	The MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory (MIT-NRL) is an interdepartmental center that operates a high performance 6 MW research reactor known as the MITR-II. NRL staff also provide technical assistance for research projects for high school students, undergraduate and graduate students, university researchers and faculty members, and national laboratory users.
(formerly High Throughput Screening Facility)	76-047	The High Throughput Screening Facility provides automated screening capability to KI and MIT researchers, as well as access to curated small molecule and lentiviral shRNA (RNAi) libraries. The facility is equipped with an Arrayscan automated confocal high content screening microscope, Tecan Evo liquid handlers, plate washers, automated micoplate centrifuges, an automated plate reader, and automated CO2 incubators. The instruments can be used in either walk-up or automated modes using our robot arms for general screening or plate preparation. The facility provides assay development and screening services in both BL2 and BL2+ space, as well as consultation and training for researchers with specific needs or challenging problems
	68-470	The Structural Biology Core Facility is open to the entire MIT community in structural biology and provides access to state-of-the-art equipment for X-ray crystallography.
	2-325	The Department of Chemistry’s X-Ray Diffraction Facility is equipped with two modern and versatile Bruker diffractometers. These diffractometers are coupled to extraordinarily sensitive Bruker APEX and APEX2 CCD detectors that give rise to high-resolution data even on very small crystals (down to 10μm) and facilitate the collection of complete and highly redundant datasets in any given Laue class. Modern low-temperature devices from Oxford Cryosystems, covering a temperature range from 90 to 500K, complete our setup. The X-ray Diffraction Facility offers full single crystal X-ray structure determination at two wavelengths (Cu or Mo), including the determination of absolute configuration of chiral molecules from anomalous scattering.”
	68-316	The BioMicro Center was founded as the core biofabrication and microarray processing facility at MIT, offering a wide range of genomic services to researchers. Majority of services rendered pertain to massively parallel sequencing using the Illumina platform, commercial array processing, real-time PCR, and informatics and computational support.
	NE47, 3rd floor	Applied Biosystems 7900HT 384-well plate qPCR Facility; Biacore (Surface Plasmon Resonance) Facility; Cressington Quick Freeze-Deep Etch EM Prep Facility; Multiphoton Microscopy Facility; Alpha Innotech Gel Imaging Facility
	76-037	The Peterson (1957) Nanotechnology Materials Core Facility provides a broad range of equipment and expertise to work with nanomaterials for the purposes of both characterization and imaging. Core imaging capabilities include a high performance field emission transmission electron microscope equipped for STEM, EELS, EDS and cryo-imaging, cryo-sample preparation, a freeze fracture system, and an atomic force microscope. Instrumentation for material characterization includes high throughput particle sizing, HPLC and dedicated nucleic acid HPLC, dynamic mechanical analysis, and rheometry.

Data Analysis and Data Management
Facility	Location	Description
	76-158; 68-317a	The Barbara K. Ostrom (1978) Bioinformatics & Computing Facility provides Koch Institute researchers with assistance and training in a wide range of bioinformatics related topics. Access is typically reserved for KI members. In some circumstances, access may be available to non-member MIT users. Examples include assistance with experimental design and subsequent analysis of next-generation sequencing and microarray experiments, genome annotation projects and other sequence and phylogenetic analysis applications. The Core also provides KI members with critical data backup as well as installation and maintenance of desktop hardware and a variety of software, including scientific applications.
	46-2303L	The Picower Institute's Bioinformatics Office has been developed to utilize high-performance computing clusters to support high throughput data analysis, with a particular focus on genomic and epigenomic data analysis to support bench biologists.
	7-238	Data Management Services (DMS) provides the MIT research community with expertise on managing research data throughout the research data life-cycle. From working with researchers to develop data management plans, through advising on how to conduct effective data management during research execution, to providing recommendations on final data sharing and publication, as frequently required by funders and journals, DMS partners to increase the impact and effectiveness of data. DMS offers individual consultations, general workshops, and customized workshops on issues of data management. Contact DMS at .

Fabrication
Facility	Location	Description
	38-001	The Central Machine Shop provides convenient, flexible and cost effective machine shop services to the MIT research community and acts as a clearing house for sending appropriate jobs to external shops. The Central Machine Shop personnel will work from a spectrum of rough sketches to machine drawings to create the machined product you require. Requests for shop services can be done either in person or from the Central Machine Shop webpage. Email can be sent directly to the Central Machine Shop .
	N51-328	The Design Fabrication Group is a center for education and research in areas of rapid prototyping and CAD/CAM fabrication for architects and designers. The group engages faculty, students and staff in research focused on the relationship between design computing and physical output used for design representation and reflection.
	4-131b, 4-043	The LEM includes a variety of prototyping and machining equipment available to DMSE for fabrication of experimental equipment, sample preparation, and general machining needs.
	8-102	The Laboratory for Advanced Materials (LAM) is in 8-102. It is a shared facility, designed for flexible use. Some lab subjects meet in the LAM.
	39	The Microsystems Technology Laboratories microfabrication facilities include three cleanroom labs, which offer varying degrees of flexibility and cleanliness levels: Integrated Circuits Laboratory (ICL) -CMOS-compatible processes; Technology Research Laboratory (TRL)- CMOS-compatible plus opto-electronics, MEMS and other semiconductor processes; Exploratory Materials Laboratory (EML) - flexible processes on many materials; and Electron-beam Lithography facility (EBL) - enables writing patterns of arbitrary geometries with minimum features sizes as fine as 5 nm. MTL’s fabrication facilities are open to all MIT faculty and students, as well as users from other academic institutions.
	Building 12	MIT.nano is home to approximately 50,000-square-feet of Class 100/1000 cleanroom for the design, fabrication, and analysis of micro and nanoscale structures and devices. Our tools support a wide spectrum of nanofabrication processes including lithography, deposition, dry etching, diffusion, wet processing, and metrology. All of MIT.nano’s facilities are available to any trained researcher from across MIT, as well as external users from industry, academia, and government.
	38-177	The scanning-electron-beam lithography (SEBL) facility enables the writing of patterns of arbitrary geometries with minimum features as fine as 17 nm.

Human Subjects Testing
Facility	Location	Description
	E25-131,201	MIT Center for Clinical and Translational Research can accommodate the full range of human subject research. Research can measure numerous clinical standards of care using tools that include everything from wireless vital sign sensors to high-resolution ultrasound.

Imaging: Animal Modeling and Clinical Testing
Facility	Location	Description
	76-188	The Applied Therapeutics and Whole Animal Imaging Core Facility's primary goal is to support and encourage the translational efforts using refined mouse models of human cancers to test chemotherapeutic response and drug resistance, biosensors for tumor detection and monitoring, diagnostics assays, cancer vaccines, drug delivery systems, and tumor-targeted modalities. Also provides access to instrumentation for in vivo, whole animal imaging, including bioluminescence, fluorescence, ultrasound, and microCT tecnologies.

Imaging
Facility	Location	Description
	13-1012	Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) allows the researcher to form images of thin slices or nano particles of samples at a resolution of down to 0.14 nm (lattice resolution). Crystal structure may be analyzed by means of electron diffraction, and chemical analysis, with a sensitivity (in ideal cases) of a few atoms and spatial resolution (again, in ideal cases) of about 0.5nm, may be performed by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) analysis or electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) analysis. The Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) is a tool for visualizing the surface of solid samples, with a resolution (depending on the application) that can approach 1nm. Energy-dispersive X-ray analysis can be used to analyze volumes with dimensions of around 1 micron with a sensitivity of about 0.2wt%, while back-scattered electron imaging allows the visualization of regions of different composition. Crystallographic orientation and structure can be examined using electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) analysis, though sample preparation requirements for this technique are very stringent and limit the number of samples that can be studied in this way.
	46-1171	The Martinos Imaging Center is a core facility that provides access to state-of-the-art brain imaging technologies for MIT researchers and their collaborators, including human MRI, small-animal MRI, EEG and MEG. Major research themes at the center include: brain mechanisms of perception, memory, emotion, executive function and social cognition; developmental studies of children; and translational studies on the neural basis of many different psychiatric and neurological disorders.
	76-281	The Microscopy Core Facility provides experimental consultation, fee-for-service imaging assistance, and training in and access to several imaging platforms, image acquisition equipment and data analysis software packages. Services include light and epifluorescence microscopy, deconvolution-based microscopy, spinning disk confocal microscopy, total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy, spectral karyotyping and fluorescent in situ hybridization, laser capture microdissection, and standard transmission electron and immunoelectron microscopy.
	Building 12 lower level	MIT.nano’s 11,000-square-foot characterization space features twelve imaging suites that house an array of highly sensitive microscopes and other instrumentation to support dimensional science of surfaces and interfaces, advanced imaging spectroscopy (ambient, Cryo, and in-situ), and nanoscale analysis. All of MIT.nano’s facilities, including Characterization.nano, are available to any trained researcher from across MIT, as well as external users from industry, academia, and government.
	Whitehead Institute, Room 447	Provides state of the art instrumentation and technical expertise to generate and interpret microscopic images; assists investigators in applying sophisticated microscopy techniques to their research; and trains researchers in microscopy techniques and methodology.

Instrument Repair
Facility	Location	Description
	4-069	Provides diagnosis, repair, modification, consultation, and education of laboratory equipment and electronic instrumentation in departmental laboratories. Also provides access to analytical instruments. It is a resource specific to members of the Department of Chemistry.

Materials Production and Analysis
Facility	Location	Description
	12-011	The CPRL is a central facility with a wide range of analytical and ceramics processing equipment. Provides services for members of the MIT community and outside users. The CPRL is also home to Michael Cima's research group. Currently investigating a number of interesting research areas, including advanced drug delivery techniques and high temperature superconductivity.
	NE47-4F	Founded in 2002, the ISN is a result of the Army’s vision to explore the potential power of nanotechnology to enable unprecedented advances in capabilities for Soldier protection and survivability. To capitalize on this opportunity, the Army decided to create the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies as a university center for basic research on nanotechnology. ISN equipment and facilities are available as resources to members of the MIT community.
	4-421, 13-5016, 8-241, 8-102	The Laboratory for Physical Metallurgy (or Metlab for short) is a shared facility in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. The facility includes a polishing laboratory for sample preparation and metallography, a heat treatment lab with furnaces and powder processing equipment, and a mechanical testing lab for uniaxial tension/compression and bending tests. The Metlab also contains hardness testing equipment in the Laboratory for Advanced Materials (LAM).
	13-4111, 4137, 4139, and 4151	Analytical techniques available include Auger spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation, Thermal Analysis techniques and Profilometry. A wide array of spectroscopy techniques, including UV-visible-near IR spectrophotometry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy.
	13-4027 and 13-4041	The X-Ray Diffraction SEF contains a suite of X-ray instruments for analysis of polycrystalline samples, coatings, epitaxial thin films, nanostructured samples, polymers, and single crystals. The assortment of equipment has been selected to provide flexibility so that we can accommodate a wide variety of demanding research. Analytical techniques include XRPD, XRR, HRXRD, SAXS, XRF and Laue diffraction.
	Building 12 lower level	MIT.nano’s 11,000-square-foot characterization space features twelve imaging suites that house an array of highly sensitive microscopes and other instrumentation to support dimensional science of surfaces and interfaces, advanced imaging spectroscopy (ambient, Cryo, and in-situ), and nanoscale analysis. All of MIT.nano’s facilities, including Characterization.nano, are available to any trained researcher from across MIT, as well as external users from industry, academia, and government.
	8-114	A state-of-the-art laboratory in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT for probing the properties and surfaces of engineering and biological materials at atomic and molecular length scales through mechanical contact.
	76-037	The Peterson (1957) Nanotechnology Materials Core Facility provides a broad range of equipment and expertise to work with nanomaterials for the purposes of both characterization and imaging. Core imaging capabilities include a high performance field emission transmission electron microscope equipped for STEM, EELS, EDS and cryo-imaging, cryo-sample preparation, a freeze fracture system, and an atomic force microscope. Instrumentation for material characterization includes high throughput particle sizing, HPLC and dedicated nucleic acid HPLC, dynamic mechanical analysis, and rheometry.
	8-140	Nocera Pulsed laser deposition system operating with a 248 nm wavelength excimer laser.

Technology R&D
Facility	Location	Description
	31-264	Research at the GTL is focused on advanced propulsion systems and turbomachinery with activities in computational, theoretical, and experimental study of: (1) loss mechanisms and unsteady flows in turbomachines, (2) compression system stability and active control, (3) heat transfer in turbine blading, (4) gas turbine engine noise reduction and aero-acoustics, (5) pollutant emissions and community noise, and (6) MEMS-based high-power-density engines.
	17	MIT's Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel's primary use is for student projects, research and instruction, however it is also available for commercial research and development. In addition to the usual force and moment balance system, this 7 X 10-foot elliptical cross-section wind tunnel has the necessary auxiliary equipment for inlet and diffuser testing, gust generation, and production of thick boundary layers to model the earth's boundary layer.
	3-269	This lab is dedicated to the study of all aspects of marine hydrodynamics. The main facility is a variable pressure recirculating water tunnel that is capable of speeds up to 10 m/s. Experiments with conventional and novel propulsion devices, drag reduction using MHD (magneto-hydrodynamics), flow control by unsteady swimming motion and flapping foils, offshore cylinder testing and vortex-induced-vibrations are performed using state of the art measurement techniques and instrumentation.
	48-015	The MIT Towing Tank is an experimental hydrodynamics testing facility consisting of a 100 ft x 8 ft x 4 ft testing tank with a functional wave maker and beach, and an 8 ft x 3 ft x 3 ft flow visualization tank. The 100 ft long tank was originally used for ship model resistance testing, although it has been refitted to accomodate experiments associated with the study of biomimetics in marine creatures and vortex-induced vibrations, while maintaining the original model testing capabilities. The smaller visualization tank, consisting of a three axis motor system, and outfitted with a high-speed particle image velocimetry (PIV) system, is used primarily for the quantitative visualization of fluid flows.
	37-462	The Space Propulsion Laboratory (SPL) houses experimental facilities to support research and educational programs for MIT students. SPL provides the infrastructure to support the Space Propulsion graduate field in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. A significant fraction of SPL's research is focused on the development and modeling of space thrusters.
	37-315	The SSL encompasses expertise in structural dynamics, attitude determination and control, avionics, communications, optical and RF payloads, systems engineering, and integrated modeling and simulation. These competencies are applied to the development of on-orbit test beds and small satellites with partners from across academia, industry, and government. The laboratory has various in-house facilities for the design, fabrication, integration, and test of flight hardware.
	NE47-223	The mission of the Synthetic Biology Center at MIT is to develop and advance the engineering discipline for this emerging field, so that construction of novel biological systems can become a practical and useful engineering discipline.

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The growing importance of research infrastructures

March 9, 2023 | 7 min read

By Federica Rosetta

As a research infrastructure, CERN enables scientists from around the world to conduct cutting-edge research in particle physics. This is the Large Hadron Collider tunnel. (Credit: Maximilien Brice/CERN)

Research infrastructures are critical for science, the economy and researchers; two experts weigh in on why and how to meet the challenges

Research infrastructures — also known as core facilities or shared facilities — are critical for science, the economy and researchers themselves. They give researchers access to the high-quality resources and services they need to foster innovation and develop cutting-edge technologies to address global challenges and drive the green and digital transition. Until recently, however, many scientific disciplines and many parts of the world have underestimated the critical role such facilities can play. But that has been changing. As Ondřej Hradil opens in new tab/window , Research Infrastructure Manager at Masaryk University opens in new tab/window in the Czech Republic, explained:

"Historically only certain fields of science, typically physics, have recognized the value of research infrastructures."

Ondřej Hradil

Research Infrastructure Manager at Masaryk University

Ondřej noted that in astrophysics or particle physics, one cannot imagine modern, cutting-edge research without the “mega-science projects/facilities” such as CERN opens in new tab/window in Geneva or big telescopes. Now, other disciplines are recognizing that it makes sense to organize the necessary technology and expertise into research infrastructures. The urgency is heightened as research organizations feel the pressure of increasing costs for cutting-edge equipment with higher resolution and innovative features that requires specific expertise to be managed.

The increasingly essential nature of research infrastructure has earned it a place at the top of the EU research agenda. The European Council’s conclusions on research infrastructures opens in new tab/window , adopted in December 2022, address the need to broaden access to RIs and further advance the European research infrastructure ecosystem. Similarly, the Declaration on fostering a Global Ecosystem of Research Infrastructures opens in new tab/window — the so called Brno Declaration — represents a call for action to support the development of a thriving global Research Infrastructures ecosystem. That declaration was launched in October under the Czech Presidency of the EU Council and during the International Conference on Research Infrastructures 2022 (ICRI) opens in new tab/window , which Ondřej helped organize.

Similarly the current Swedish EU Council Presidency has put RIs as a top priority in the Research & Innovation agenda and is planning a major event in June in Lund opens in new tab/window focusing on how RIs can provide “new opportunities and benefits for society.”

Alberto Zigoni opens in new tab/window , Product Director for Academic Information Systems at Elsevier, agreed with Ondřej on the importance of infrastructure as a critical input to the research system and a tool for fostering collaboration. He said the roundtable Elsevier hosted with Science|Business in June — The investment challenge: How to assess the impact of research infrastructures opens in new tab/window — confirmed the importance of putting research infrastructure at the center of the research policy agenda:

"It ensures the continuation of current initiatives while planning for new ones that can foster future competitiveness. This is particularly true for Europe, which is lagging behind the United States and China on this front, so I’m pleased to see that research infrastructure is a priority area for the European Research Area Policy Agenda."

Alberto Zigoni

Portfolio Integration Director at Elsevier

Report: Attracting investment for research infrastructures

This report, by Elsevier and Science|Business, covers topics such as:

Pitching for investment

Assessing the impact of research infrastructure

Determining where to invest

Alberto emphasized the need for a structured, multi-stakeholder approach to impact assessment. That, he said, requires a multi-faceted definition of “impact” and the ability to create a compelling narrative that combines qualitative and quantitative elements and can be tailored to the specific audience, be it government, the private sector or local communities:

While some aspects of economic and societal impact — especially local ones such as new jobs created — are not necessarily directly related to scientific impact, other forms of economic and societal impact, with a broader reach and longer timeframes to develop, are related to scientific impact. For instance, scientific publications are routinely cited in patents to uphold their claims; likewise, many policy documents on major issues such as climate change and global health issues use scientific research to support political decisions. These are all pathways to impact that can be recognized by starting with an assessment of the scientific impact. The latter can be evaluated by tracking publications that report results of scientific research which involved research infrastructures.

The need for impact assessment is vital, Ondřej agreed, emphasizing that without it, funding would be hard to raise and sustain:

Research infrastructures require a substantial investment to establish and cover their operating costs. So, it does not come as a surprise that funders need to make some tough choices, and their expectation is that research infrastructures that are funded will deliver value and perform well, especially with regards to providing and the needed services required by the wide scientific community to advance science. Next to that, funders look also at wider impacts on society and the economy. Nowadays public budgets are under unprecedented pressure and must be carefully prioritized. The scientific, economic and societal impact of research infrastructures is more important than ever and needs to be proven. Depending on the country or funder, the relative importance of the impacts will differ.

Necessary as it may be, evaluating the impact of research infrastructure has its challenges. The typical metrics for measuring scientific impact are user publications, patents and other bibliometric indicators, which can usually be done with the help of database such as Scopus . However, Ondřej pointed out that this does not offer the complete picture:

What is still missing are reliable data to link publications to individual facilities and research infrastructures. This is due to a lack of practice in the academic community around acknowledging facilities, which is not always at the desirable level among authors and facilities. Secondly, the acknowledgement of facilities is not yet widely supported by journals. At the end of the day, the scientific impact evaluation can only be performed manually using full-text search of articles — which is frustrating.

Alberto agreed, commenting:

The need for data exposes the main challenge, which is data collection, as indicated by Ondřej. If we limit the scope to the evaluation of scientific impact, data collection translates in the ability to collect scientific publications that describe research activities where the RI in scope was used. As simple and obvious as this sounds, it is extremely difficult to track those papers in an automated manner: with the exception of the very large RIs such as the Large Hadron Collider, traditional methods based on article metadata such as authors and their affiliations, or funding acknowledgments, don’t work.

There are two key reasons for that, he suggested:

Firstly, lab staff is usually not included in the authors list; likewise, facilities where the experiments took place may or may not be mentioned in the acknowledgements section of the article. Furthermore, if a funder wants to evaluate what instruments have been used, those mentions usually occur in the body of the article, in a section called ‘Materials and Methods’ or something similar. That makes it extremely difficult to collect those papers using databases such as Scopus or PubMed. The remaining option is to reach out to researchers and lab managers to try to collect publications, which leads in general to a significant underrepresentation of the impact a piece of infrastructure may have had.

How can we support impact assessment?

So what can be done to address these issues? Ondřej shared his thoughts:

I mentioned two issues. The culture of acknowledging facilities can be improved by ongoing communication with the users. This is the task of facilities and their staff to remind users to do this. As facilities contribute to the experiments, I do consider this an ethical obligation, too. In fact, getting access to facilities has its financial value, which is often overlooked, but shall be clearly stated in the publication in the same way as funding/grant acknowledgements. Facilities shall also establish policies when and how the facility shall be, given their contribution, acknowledged or the facility staff shall be among the co-authors of the paper. This prevents future conflicts.

The second issue, Ondřej said, is closely linked to publishers and journals. He suggested that publishers include facility acknowledgements in their publication processes by integrating them into their submission checklists and relevant acknowledgement sections. “Many journals and publishers do not consider this to be important so far. There is much work ahead of us to change this,” he said. “At the end of the day, having proper acknowledgements in publications can also improve the research quality and reproducibility. Many facilities are actively engaged in helping users with their data — co-designing experiments, acquisition of raw data, data analysis and interpretation from initial treatment to the creation of figures, data archiving and sharing of raw and processed data. Giving a quality label of reliable data management by the facilities is important.”

Alberto, meanwhile, pointed to pilots that were already underway as a possible solution:

Over the past year, we have worked together with academic institutions on pilot projects where we are trying to answer the question: ‘What is the scientific impact of my institution’s research infrastructure?’ A good example is the partnership with Dutch institutions opens in new tab/window , as part of a broader collaboration around open science. Our goal is to provide the quantitative evidence that research leaders at institutions can use to inform their qualitative assessment and provide data for evidence-based decision making. We are not developing a new assessment methodology: (for that) we rely on industry best practices and Elsevier's Research Intelligence portfolio . We focus instead on automating the task of collecting publications so they can be fed into our systems for analysis.

The team has developed a sophisticated Natural Language Processing algorithm that is trained to identify those mentions in the “materials and methods” or equivalent section in scientific literature and link them to a taxonomy of research infrastructure. By using this approach, the team been able to collect up to four times more links between equipment and publications compared to traditional methods.

Both Alberto and Ondřej predicted that interest in research infrastructure would continue to grow, and with it the need for measurement as a way of demonstrating impact. As Ondřej noted, it’s a cause the research community would do well to rally behind:

This is yet an unexplored topic of interest to a wide community of facilities, irrespective of their scientific domain or size. Not only to the big ones such as ESFRI opens in new tab/window projects but also to smaller and mid-sized facilities that are typically hosted by universities and research institutes. So I hope we will get together a critical mass to move this topic further, work together with journals and publishers and possibly establish well-accepted standards.

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Federica Rosetta

VP of Academic & Research Relations, EU

NASA's Glenn Research Center's world-class facilities and expert staff help develop and verify cutting-edge technologies in the areas of aeronautics, aerospace and space. Our premier ground test facilities support powered flight through the atmosphere and beyond.

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Aero-Acoustic Propulsion Laboratory

The Aero-Acoustic Propulsion Laboratory (AAPL) is a world-class facility for conducting aero-propulsion noise reduction research. With over 20 years of testing experience in acoustic research and development, the AAPL, located at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, is a world-class facility providing outstanding testing services in aircraft propulsion acoustic noise reduction and performance research. Unique in testing … Read the rest ⇢

Space Environments Complex

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There are several state-of-the-art test rigs and facilities at the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) operated by GRC’s mTRAX Planetary Exploration team. These rigs serve to test planetary roving vehicle systems and components in simulated planetary and lunar conditions. There are several state-of-the-art test rigs and facilities at the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) operated … Read the rest ⇢

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Power Systems Facility

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The 10- by 10-Foot Supersonic Wind Tunnel (10×10) is the largest and fastest wind tunnel facility at NASA’s Glenn Research Center and is specifically designed to test supersonic propulsion components from inlets and nozzles to full-scale jet and rocket engines. The Unitary Plan Act, passed by Congress in 1949, was a coordinated national plan of … Read the rest ⇢

Boundary Layer Ingesting Inlet Distortion Tolerant Fan

8×6 Supersonic Wind Tunnel

The 8- by 6-Foot Supersonic Wind Tunnel (8×6) operates either in an aerodynamic closed-loop cycle, testing aerodynamic performance models, or in a propulsion open-loop cycle that tests live fuel burning engines and models. The 8×6 is a world-class facility that provides researchers with the opportunity to explore higher speed regions of flight. It is NASA’s … Read the rest ⇢

Advanced Ducted Propulsor (ADP) Fan Commissioning Test in the 9- by 15-Foot Low-Speed Wind Tunnel (9x15)

9×15 Low-Speed Wind Tunnel

The 9- by 15-Foot Low-Speed Wind Tunnel (9×15) is the most utilized low-speed propulsion acoustic facility in the world. It is the only national facility that can simulate takeoff, approach, and landing in a continuous subsonic environment. The 9×15 is a significant asset to the nation and the aero-propulsion community because of its unique ability … Read the rest ⇢

Customer Facility Evaluation Survey

Hypersonic Tunnel Facility

The Hypersonic Tunnel Facility (HTF) at NASA’s Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility (ATF) Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility (ATF) located in Sandusky, OH, originally designed to test nuclear thermal rocket nozzles, is a hypersonic (Mach 5, 6, and 7) blowdown, nonvitiated freejet facility that tests large-scale hypersonic air-breathing propulsion systems. Designed to conduct research, development, … Read the rest ⇢

Icing Research Tunnel

NASA Glenn Research Centers Icing Research Tunnel supports the development of tools and methods for simulating the growth of ice on aircraft surfaces as well as the development and certification of ice protection systems. The Icing Research Tunnel (IRT) is the longest running, icing facility in the world and has been in operation since 1944. … Read the rest ⇢

Using Our Facilities

NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland provides ground test facilities to industry, government, and academia specializing in the following: Acoustics Engine Components Testing Full-Scale Engine Testing Flight Research Icing Research Materials and Structures Microgravity Space Power and Propulsion Wind Tunnels Electromagnetic Interference Laboratory Our unique facilities offer superior customer service, flexible scheduling, and state-of-the-art testing … Read the rest ⇢

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J Biomol Tech
v.33(1); 2022 Apr 15

Assessing and Improving Research Quality in Core Facilities

Isabelle c. kos-braun.

1 Interdisciplinary Neurobehavioral Core, Heidelberg University, 69120 Heidelberg , Germany

Björn Gerlach

2 PAASP GmbH, 69118 Heidelberg , Germany

Claudia Pitzer

Core facilities allow scientists to perform experiments needing specialized technologies in a time- and cost-efficient way. They became increasingly important and now produce a significant amount of research data. Experiments carried out in core facilities are typically shared between the facility staff and the users. However, sharing experiments brings additional challenges to ensure data rigor and reproducibility—for example, in communication, trust, and accountability. We present here an interactive website developed especially for core facilities that offers tools to help them assess, improve, and ensure research quality.

INTRODUCTION

Core facilities are shared resource laboratories that provide access to specialized instrumentation, advanced technologies, and services to scientific investigators. They play an important role in life science as they generate a substantial part of the research data. 1 , 2 Being specialists in their field, the facility staff can provide useful training and mentoring to their users and help support scientific rigor and reproducibility. In addition, by being independent units, core facilities can offer protection against experimental bias. 2

Core facilities have different operating modes, depending on who performs the experiment. In full-service facilities, the experiments are performed exclusively by the staff, whereas self-service facilities provide specialized equipment to their users who perform the experiment themselves. Any intermediate combination is possible in hybrid-service facilities where the staff and users share the experimental procedure sequentially or conjointly.

However, the fact that experiments are shared between staff and users can make the production of quality data more difficult, as shown in the survey on research quality that we conducted at 253 core facilities from different fields of life sciences. 3 The survey revealed that communication, management, and responsibility sharing are particularly challenging aspects that can negatively impact on data rigor and reproducibility when experiments are shared.

It is not always obvious how to deal with these issues in a context in which the user turnover is high and the experimental requirements are constantly changing. Some core facilities have implemented different quality systems to help them ensure rigor and reproducibility (for example, ISO9001, PREMIER (Predictiveness and Robustness through Modular Improvement of Experimental Research), or EQIPD (Enhancing Quality in Preclinical Data)). 4 However, these quality systems require time and resources to implement or even additional qualified staff for their management, which core facilities often cannot afford. In addition, these quality systems usually do not consider the specific needs of core facilities, nor their particular operating modes, which can make their implementation difficult and less effective.

We initiated the Q-CoFa project (Quality at the interface between Core Facilities and their users) to analyze and understand the interactions between core facilities and their users and see how these play a role in the quality of research data. Using the results of our survey, including the free-text field responses, as well as the current norms and literature, we compiled recommendations for the best practices, offering practical solutions that are pertinent for core facilities in academic settings. The recommendations are freely available on the website www.quality-in-core-facilities.org , which is mainly intended as a tool for core facility leaders, but the information will also be useful for core facility staff members and users. Our vision is to create a site providing advice “for core facilities by core facilities” that will engage the whole core facility community in the process of self-improvement and thus benefit from the hands-on experiences from various core facilities settings. Therefore, one part of the website uses MediaWiki, which allows editing of the recommendations and contribution with new information. In the following paragraphs, we will introduce the website and briefly describe the information available.

THE Q-COFA WEBSITE

After an introductory page, the main menu presents 20 different aspects affecting research quality, with each aspect having subpages for self-testing, recommendations, or downloads ( Figure 1 ). In the main menu, the visitor has the following options: choose a specific aspect and test how he/she performs in that respect ( Figure 2 A), read the relevant recommendations ( Figure 2 B), or download concrete templates to help implement it ( Figure 2 C). Additionally, when one is not sure where to start, the site provides a general test to identify which aspects might need to be improved first ( Figure 2 D).

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is jbt-33-1-research-quality-in-core-facilities-g001.jpg

Structure of the Q-CoFa (Quality in Core Facilities) website. An introductory home page leads to current norms, literature, and the main menu, presenting all aspects influencing research quality. For each of these aspects, three further subpages are available: test-yourself, recommendations, and download.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is jbt-33-1-research-quality-in-core-facilities-g002.jpg

Four choices of what can be done from the main menu of the Q-CoFa website. ( A ) Test yourself on a particular aspect of research quality. ( B ) Read recommendations on how to improve research quality in a certain area. ( C ) Download templates to help implement a certain aspect. ( D ) Take a general test to identify which aspects to improve.

Benchmarking

To help the visitors embark on the improvement journey in an efficient way, we provide a general assessment test with 54 questions covering all the aspects of research quality shown in Figure 1 . The test result shows one’s performance for each aspect separately and allows a core facility to identify the aspects to consider for improvement.

In addition to the general test, shorter tests specific for each aspect (with 4 to 7 questions each) allow a more detailed assessment of one’s strengths and weaknesses in a selected area and compares one’s own performance to the average results of the previous visitors. All responses are stored anonymously in a database and, together with all the previous tests, used to calculate the average results presented to the next visitor. Like this, an entertaining benchmarking is possible and might encourage the visitor to improve certain aspects in their facility.

Recommendations for how to improve research quality

Once a process to improve has been identified, the detailed recommendations accessible via the main menu provide advice to help the core facilities improve it. They are written in a simple and informal way and make use of direct quotes of core facility leaders from our survey. 3 The recommendations are practice oriented and consider the additional difficulties raised by sharing the experimental procedure between the user and the facility staff. Although applicable to all types of core facilities in general, individual recommendations can be adapted to the specific needs of the core facility if necessary. Importantly, we would like to encourage the core facility community to expand the information and contribute with their own experience using the MediaWiki interface (editing is possible after registration).

To illustrate the information available, the “Communication” section, for example, gives ideas for how to structure the first meeting with the user, reminds of the importance of involving the user and the PI (Principal Investigator) from the very beginning, and speaks about communication soft skills and communication management. The “Interaction with users” section uses quotes from core facility leaders to exemplify the problems such as noncooperative users and provides many practical and original solutions on how to deal with them. The “Management” section discusses and compares different management software to reduce the time the core facility staff needs to spend on these issues. Last, we would like to point out the “Quality checkpoint” section that discusses the importance of supervision and checking in order to ensure research quality. We recommend introducing certain checkpoints to maximize data quality while keeping a balance between quality, cost, and manageable procedure. Several time- and cost-effective checkpoints should be placed at strategic steps spanning the whole experimental procedure: 1) Experimental design, 2) Sample quality, 3) Data analysis, and 4) Publication. Introducing these checkpoints does not mean that core facilities should have the entire control over the experiment but rather serve to initiate a discourse and awareness about data rigor at all experimental steps between the user, PI, and core facility. 3

Downloads pages

Each area also has an upload/download space where the core facility community can share and exchange useful files, which are modifiable for customization. For example, a ready-to-use template of a feedback form can be found there, as well as a generic data management form, which comes with explanations encouraging further reflection on the procedure that the facility wants to adopt together with the user to guarantee traceable data. Documentation guidelines help to ensure that all aspects of the experimental documentation are complete. Furthermore, a responsibility table can assist and summarize the discussion between the facility staff, the user, and PI when they define how the tasks’ responsibility will be shared between them. Again, we invite the core facility community to share their own templates by uploading them in the relevant section.

In summary, the Q-CoFa website aims to help core facilities self-improve research quality, time efficiency, and customer service. It helps critically review one’s own facility, compare oneself with others, prepare for an audit, or establish a new core facility.

Core facilities provide valuable service and expertise to the scientific community. While training their users, they can play a very important role in teaching and spreading good research practices. In addition, they can provide independent quality controls along the experimental process. The Q-CoFa website offers a framework to core facilities on how to self-assess and improve research quality, considering the challenges posed by the close interaction between facility staff and users throughout the shared experimental process. We believe it would be helpful to introduce an incentive to motivate and convince users to follow optimal research practices and procedures. We imagine that core facilities, certified by an independent organization, could reward users having carried out their experiments to the highest standards with a “quality label” in the future. To support this effort, we integrated the recommendations from the Q-CoFa project into the EQIPD quality system and set up a specific framework called “EQIPD NEED for core facilities” ( https://eqipd-toolbox.paasp.net/wiki/NEED ). This provides a basis for the development of a quality label specific for core facilities. Such a label will be valuable when recognized and trusted by publishers and funding agencies. We hope our Q-CoFa website will encourage the core facilities community to improve further research quality in life sciences.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors are grateful to Martin Kos for helpful discussions and critical reading of the manuscript. They would like to thank Barbara Hendriks, Sylvia Badurek, Lior Bikovski, and Christof Lenz for their suggestions on how to improve the Q-CoFa website. They also thank Anton Bespalov and Christoph Emmerich for their critical consultation on the project. This work was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, Grant No. 01PW18001, project Q-CoFa) and was performed at the Interdisciplinary Neurobehavioral Core facility at the University of Heidelberg.

Chang M, Grieder FB. Sharing core facilities and research resources—an investment in accelerating scientific discoveries . J Biomol Tech . 2016; 27 ( 1 ):2-3. doi: 10.7171/jbt.16-2701-004 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Meder D, Morales M, Pepperkok R, Schlapbach R, Tiran A, Van Minnebruggen G. Institutional core facilities: prerequisite for breakthroughs in the life sciences: core facilities play an increasingly important role in biomedical research by providing scientists access to sophisticated technology and expertise . EMBO Rep . 2016; 17 ( 8 ):1088-1093. doi: 10.15252/embr.201642857 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Kos-Braun IC, Gerlach B, Pitzer C. A survey of research quality in core facilities . eLife . 2020; 9 :e62212. doi: 10.7554/eLife.62212 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Dirnagl U, Kurreck C, Castaños-Vélez E, Bernard R. Quality management for academic laboratories: burden or boon? EMBO Rep . 2018; 19 ( 11 ):e47143. doi: 10.15252/embr.201847143 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

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Core facilities are central hubs of discovery

Core facilities can boost an institution’s capacity for research collaboration, but they present challenges for those who run them.

The California Nanosystems Institute core facility of the University of California, Los Angeles. Credit: Matt Harbicht / Getty Images for UCLA

Centralized and shared facilities at research institutions provide access to instruments, technologies, and services, such as expert consultation and sample processing. Core facilities reduce the equipment and labour costs of individual labs, and can facilitate close collaboration between researchers from different fields and institutions.

Managing core facilities, and establishing new ones, can be extremely complex. Considerations such as hiring a strong team of core staff and raising the funds to supply state-of-the-art equipment to users can present a constant challenge. But there can be major advantages for institutions with core facilities, including consolidation of resources that can reduce costs per service or equipment use and equitable access to niche and emerging areas of research.

In 2018, three years after bioengineer Samy Gobaa first floated the idea of setting up a core facility on microfluidics at Institut Pasteur, a non-profit foundation and biomedical research centre in Paris, he was granted the funds to set up the Biomaterials and Microfluidics core facility .

Gobaa says some senior colleagues initially saw a core facility dedicated to microfluidics, which studies the behaviour of fluids through micro-channels, as “nice to have”, rather than an essential service.

He set about demonstrating that microfluidic and bioengineering tools can inform high-impact research, such as understanding infectious diseases. A microfluidic organ-on-a-chip system, for example, can be physiologically closer to functioning human organs than two-dimensional culture systems, he says, and can better recapitulate pathogenic processes in humans.

“We had to convince [potential] users, who are biologists and unfamiliar with engineering tools, that microfluidics could add value to their research,” says Gobaa.

Besides organizing regular meetings with users to understand their projects and experimental needs, Gobaa says they dedicate specific core facility staff to the projects that they are most passionate about and experienced in, so they can help users reduce risk for their project ideas and develop proofs of concept.

“Today, we have 40 projects [with Institut Pasteur researchers] running at the facility,” he says. “It’s important to convince stakeholders, through targeted communication and flagship projects, to show that core facility expertise can benefit their research,” says Gobaa. The core facility team sent emails to researchers investigating intestinal infections, for example, showing how their microfluidic devices could advance their work.

The facility’s funding came from Institut Pasteur, as well as a regenerative biology and medicine consortium, LabEx Revive also based there, and Institut Carnot, another research institute based in Paris.

Hire the right staff

Finding staff with the right skills to support a core facility is crucial, says Adam Stieg , associate director of Technology Centres, and director of the Nano & Pico Characterization Lab within the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), a core facility of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

CNSI opened its doors in 2007–08 and has since built a collection of resources that provide internal and external users with access to highly sought-after resources such as electron microscopy, nanofabrication, and high throughput screening.

Core facility staff must combine strong technical skills with a passion for teaching and training, along with a bit of business acumen, says Stieg.

“A [core] facility can be filled with the latest equipment, but it’s the people who support their use that matter most,” he says. Stieg joined the core facility straight after completing a PhD in chemistry at UCLA in 2007. His colleagues include researchers who have done postdocs, and some who have industry experience. In the CNSI Technology Centres, 57% of staff have PhDs, 40% have postdoc experience and 40% of staff have previously worked in the industry.

Stieg says that while a recent PhD graduate is paid more as a CNSI staff scientist than as an academic postdoc in UCLA, unlike professorships, positions in core facilities generally do not include academic tenure and other associated benefits, and often cannot offer competitive salaries compared to jobs in industry.

“For instance, a researcher trained to run a high-throughput drug-screening platform would likely receive a better compensation package in industry companies than in academic core facilities,” he says. “That can make it challenging to attract and retain talent to run [academic] core facilities.”

A 2020 survey by the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF) found that industry core-facility personnel are paid roughly 40% more than their counterparts in academic and government core facilities. The same trend was observed for all personnel, regardless of whether they are at the director or non-director levels.

Academic core facility staff must therefore be enticed in other ways, such as by creating a culture where they feel empowered to define their own career trajectory within the facility and beyond it, Stieg says, and in how they engage with researchers and projects.

Stieg’s advice is again supported by the ABRF’s survey, which showed that job satisfaction by core-facilities personnel was mostly attributed to factors relating to work environment, including autonomy of research projects and intellectual challenge – and not salary.

“Most of our technical staff have been trained as scientists and engineers,” says Stieg. “Providing them opportunities to support and collaborate with researchers on campus is empowering. They identify as more than service providers by actively contributing to discovery and innovation.”

Create a critical mass of users

When institutions are considering the establishment of a new core facility, it’s important to be realistic about whether the facility can draw in a critical mass of users to make the investment worthwhile, says Stieg.

“There may be funds available to purchase equipment, but without a broad base of regular users, there will not be sufficient resources to sustain the facility over time,” he says.

Each year, the CNSI Technology Centres support more than 650 unique users from more than 300 unique research teams, on average, including 35 research teams from industry and 20 research teams from academic institutions outside of the University of California. Stieg says this broad, diverse user base helps CNSI to offset a substantial portion of its facility operating costs.

Engaging external users such as from industry is useful because it helps to cover operating costs.

A 2013 paper led by a group of core facility management across the United States reported that core facilities, on average, require their organizations to subsidize 33% of direct costs, which is not economically sustainable in the long run, except for heavily endowed organizations. Such financial pressures explain why many academic core facilities are opening up to external users.

To gauge the interest of potential users, Stieg suggests holding workshops and performing follow-up surveys, to get a good understanding of how likely internal and external research groups are to use a new core facility. Organizing extended demonstration workshops also provides potential users the opportunity to test how the new technology could be applied to their samples.

“We are able to assess the breadth of potential impact, understand the scale of utilization, and perform a cost-benefit analysis that allows us to ensure the long-term viability of a core facility,” said Stieg.

Develop industry networks

Industry users can also expand a core-facility user base, and this provides financial benefits to both the facility and academic users, says Stieg. “Building on these relationships also opens up job opportunities for our students, based on their interaction with industry users and training in industry-relevant technologies.”

Stieg says in recent years there has been increasing discussion among core facilities leaders about managing intellectual property concerns.

For instance, staff at a core facility may start out by providing basic consultations or training to clients and end up contributing to the design of a new process flow that leads to an invention and such intellectual contribution is not part of the paid service.

“It is important that our staff and our users understand the boundaries of where service ends and invention begin,” says Stieg. “When users pay for services, it doesn’t preclude the intellectual contribution of our staff. We strive to support ‘discover, invention and translation’, but have a responsibility to protect the interests of the university, our staff, and users.”

To address this challenge, Stieg recommends that core-facility staff receive training on intellectual property, such as from the relevant university officers, to pick up on early signs of potential transition from service to invention during discussions with users.

“As universities move increasingly towards translational research, I expect this challenge to become more frequent,” he says.

Stay relevant

At the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) electrophysiology core facility, services such as cell culture and electrophysiology – a technique used to measure the electrical activity of cells, used in diagnosing heart arrhythmias and drug development – are offered to researchers from around the world.

The core facility specialises in patch clamp electrophysiology, a highly sensitive technique used to determine how certain medications can affect the electrical activities of cells.

“Patch clamp electrophysiology is a very niche technique,” says Huang Hua , a research assistant professor who runs the facility at NUS. “We are probably the only core facility that provides patch clamp electrophysiology service in Singapore.”

The electrophysiology core facility was established at NUS in 2018 to provide services primarily to researchers within NUS and the Singapore National University Health System. It is closely integrated with the university and shares its resources, says Huang.

“Our staff salary is currently funded by the School of Medicine dean’s office, while some of our equipment is on loan from a senior professor,” says Huang. This is how he is able to keep his user fees minimal, he says. “We may have to increase our fee by four to five times if we were to spin off as an independent contract research company.”

As research fields advance and equipment and techniques change, core facilities must be able to pivot and stay relevant, says Huang, who with his team is currently working with existing clients to develop a more comprehensive service package based on their changing needs.

He says they are also diversifying their clientele beyond researchers, such as to clinicians, to understand the clinical impact of rare diseases that affect cells’ electrical activity.

“Our core facility is starting to provide services to reflect research trends, including recording electrical signals from human brain organoids – 3D miniaturized brain tissues made from stem cells – that are becoming more popular as disease models,” he says.

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The NIH Clinical Center is the nation's largest hospital devoted entirely to clinical research. Clinician-investigators translate scientific observations and laboratory discoveries into new approaches to diagnosing, treating, and preventing disease. The Clinical Center was recognized with the 2011 Lasker~Bloomberg Public Service Award for serving as a model research hospital—providing innovative therapy and high-quality patient care, treating rare and severe diseases, and producing outstanding clinician-scientists whose collective work has set a standard of excellence in biomedical research.

About 1,600 clinical research studies are in progress at the Clinical Center. Half are studies of the natural pathogenesis of disease, especially rare diseases, which often are not studied anywhere else. What researchers learn by studying rare diseases adds to the basic understanding of common diseases. Most other studies are clinical trials, the first tests of new drugs and therapies in people. The clinical trials at the Clinical Center are predominantly Phase I and Phase II—first-in-human to test safety and efficacy. Clinical and laboratory research is conducted shoulder-to-shoulder, and this tandem approach drives all aspects of the Clinical Center’s operations.

More than 500,000 research volunteers have participated in clinical research studies at the Clinical Center since the hospital opened in 1953. Each year, the center sees about 10,000 new research participants , who are split into two types: patient volunteers and healthy volunteers . Patient volunteers are people with specific diseases or conditions who help medical investigators learn more about their condition or test new medications, procedures, or treatments. A healthy volunteer is a person with no known significant health problems who plays a vital role in research to test a new drug, device, or intervention.

At the Clinical Center, clinical research participants are active partners in medical discovery, a partnership that has resulted in a long list of medical milestones , including the first cure of a solid tumor with chemotherapy, gene therapy, use of AZT to treat AIDS, and successful replacement of a mitral valve.

Important Events in Clinical Center History

November 1948 — Construction of the Clinical Center is started.

June 22, 1951 — President Harry S. Truman is the honored guest for the Clinical Center's cornerstone ceremony.

July 2, 1953 — The Clinical Center is dedicated by Department of Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Oveta Culp Hobby.

July 6, 1953 — The first patient is admitted to the Clinical Center.

1954 — The NIH Clinical Center's diagnostic X-ray department acquires the only Schnonander angiocardiographic unit in the United States. It takes films in two planes at the rate of six films per second, permitting a graphic demonstration of contrast substances as they pass through the heart, making diagnosis faster and more accurate.

1957 — The Clinical Pathology Department develops the first automated machine for counting red and white blood cells (until then counted manually).

1957 — The Blood Bank publishes its first research paper, delineating the post-transfusion hepatitis problem, firing the first salvo in a long but largely successful campaign.

1959 — A new, circular surgical wing is built.

September 1963 — A new surgical wing for cardiac and neurosurgery was dedicated by Surgeon General Luther L. Terry.

1963 — The Blood Bank moves to a new area and blood collections begin on the NIH campus.

1964 — Drs. Harvey Alter (Clinical Center) and Baruch Blumberg (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases) co-discover the Australian antigen, which Blumberg later shows to be the surface coating of the hepatitis B virus, leading to the isolation of this medically important virus. Blumberg later wins the Nobel Prize. Alter, who later receives the Lasker Award, does pioneering work in the causes and prevention of blood-transmitted infections, which helps lead to the discovery of the virus that causes hepatitis C and the development of screening methods that will reduce the risk of transfusion-transmitted hepatitis.

1964 — Dr. John L. Doppman and associates in diagnostic radiology report the first successful imaging of the arteries that supply the spinal cord. The technique of spinal angiography makes surgical intervention possible where spinal arterial malformations, lesions, or tumors cause paralysis.

1966 — A Nuclear Medicine Department is established in the NIH Clinical Center.

1966 — Wanda S. Chappell, chief nurse in the Blood Bank, comes up with a simple but ingenious method for separating blood platelets (the smallest blood cells) from blood plasma, so that the platelets can be used for transfusion to leukemia patients and the rest of the blood can be used by others, including patients undergoing open heart surgery.

1968 — Diagnostic radiologist Dr. John L. Doppman develops a method for locating the parathyroid, a group of glands (each about the size of a BB pellet) that regulates calcium metabolism.

1970 — The Blood Bank switches to an all-volunteer donor system, and adds a test for hepatitis B surface antigen. Those two measures alone reduce the hepatitis rate from 30 percent before 1970 to about 11 percent after. Later, when it adds more sensitive tests for hepatitis B, the virus virtually disappears as a problem in the Blood Bank .

1972 — Blood Bank scientists develop a test for the antigen associated with hepatitis. The test will eventually be used nationally.

1976 — An electronic medical information system — one of the nation's first — is introduced at the NIH Clinical Center.

April 1977 — Construction of the ambulatory care research facility is started.

November 1977 — The Critical Care Medicine Department is established.

1977 — The Blood Bank establishes therapeutic apheresis/exchange programs that for decades will improve the lifespan and welfare of patients with such illnesses as sickle cell disease, hyperlipidemia, and autoimmune disorders. It also establishes the first automated platelet-pheresis center, collecting platelets for transfusion from volunteer donors using automated instrumentation.

1980 — The research hospital is renamed the Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center, in honor of the former chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, who has actively supported biomedical research at NIH since 1937. (P.L. 96-518.)

June 16, 1981 — The first patient with the new disease, later to be named AIDS/HIV, is seen at the NIH Clinical Center.

1981 — Clinical research dietitians develop standards of care for the clinical nutrition service and devise diets with controlled intake of certain nutrients to support clinical research.

1982 — A new surgical facility and a surgical intensive care unit opens.

March 22, 1984 — The first magnetic resonance imaging unit becomes operational for patient imaging.

1984 — The Clinical Center Blood Bank is renamed the Department of Transfusion Medicine because its activities extend well beyond traditional blood banking. DTM achieves the first transmission of HIV (HTLV III) to a primate through transfusion and describes the HIV seronegative window.

April 13, 1985 — Two cyclotrons are delivered to the underground facility operated by the Nuclear Medicine Department.

1986 — The Clinical Center signs an agreement to become one of the first donor centers participating in the National Marrow Donor Program.

September 14, 1990 — A 4-year-old patient with adenosine deaminate deficiency is the first to receive gene therapy treatment.

April 8, 1991 — The Department of Transfusion Medicine opens its state-of-the-art facility.

July 1993 — The hematology/bone marrow unit opens to improve transplant procedures and develop gene therapy techniques.

May 1994 — A multi-institute unit designed and staffed for children opens.

1995 — The course “ Introduction to the Principles and Practice of Clinical Research ” is first offered. It provides education in the basics of safe, ethical, and efficient clinical research.

February 1996 — Details on clinical research studies conducted at the Clinical Center are made available online at http://clinicalstudies.info.nih.gov/ , increasing opportunities for physicians and patient volunteers to participate in NIH clinical investigations.

November 1996 — A Board of Governors is appointed by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, marking a new governing system for the Clinical Center.

July 1997 — The Department of Transfusion Medicine launches a 3,000-square feet model core [cGMP] cell processing facility, created to meet increasing investigative needs for cell products used in new cellular therapies such as immunotherapy, gene therapy, stem cell transplantation, and pancreatic islet cell transplantation.

November 4, 1997 — Vice President Al Gore and Senator Mark O. Hatfield attend groundbreaking ceremonies for the Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center, designed to include a new hospital and research laboratories.

1999 — The Clinical Pathology Department is renamed the Department of Laboratory Medicine .

1999 — The Bench-to-Bedside Awards program is established to speed translation of promising laboratory discoveries into new medical treatments by encouraging collaborations among basic scientists and clinical investigators.

2000 — The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the Clinical Center (in collaboration with Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Naval Medical Research Center, and the Diabetes Research Institute of the University of Miami) launch a new kidney, pancreas, and islet transplant program. The idea is to test novel therapies that may eliminate the need for the immunosuppressive drugs patients take to keep their bodies from rejecting new transplanted organs.

2000 — The Clinical Center launches a new Pain and Palliative Care Consult Service .

2000 — The Imaging Sciences Program takes first steps toward filmless radiology, unveiling the pilot phase of its new Picture Archiving and Communication System and Radiology Information System.

2001 — A second bone marrow transplant unit opens to support the National Cancer Institute protocols.

2002 — The Department of Transfusion Medicine establishes a model program for collecting blood from subjects with hereditary hemochromatosis . This program supplies 10 percent of the hospital's red cell needs.

October 29, 2002 — A groundbreaking ceremony is held for the Edmond J. Safra Family Lodge . Located steps away from the Clinical Center, the lodge provides a comfortable home away from home for the families and caretakers of Clinical Center patients.

2003 — The Office of Clinical Research Training and Medical Education is established to help train the next generation of clinical researchers.

2004 — As recommended by the NIH Director's Blue Ribbon Panel on the Future of Intramural Clinical Research, the former Clinical Center Board of Governors assumes a new and larger identity, becoming the NIH Advisory Board for Clinical Research. The board oversees all intramural clinical research, while continuing its oversight of Clinical Center resources, planning, and operations.

2004 — The NIH Clinical Center formalizes an emergency preparedness partnership with Suburban Hospital and the National Naval Medical Center.

August 21, 2004 — The NIH Clinical Center's updated electronic Clinical Research Information System goes live.

September 22, 2004 — The dedication ceremony is held for the Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center.

2005 — Radiologist Dr. Ronald M. Summers finds that computer-aided software, in conjunction with a procedure commonly called virtual colonoscopy, can deliver results comparable to conventional colonoscopy for detecting the most worrisome types of polyps.

2005 — Bioethics chief Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel co-authors a study suggesting that minority involvement in clinical research is more a matter of access than attitude.

2005 — The Rehabilitation Medicine Department opens its clinical movement analysis lab, a joint venture with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child health and Human Development.

April 2, 2005 — Patients are moved into the Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center and the building becomes fully operational.

May 26, 2005 — An opening ceremony is held for the Edmond J. Safra Family Lodge . The lodge opens its doors to guests on June 1.

2006 — The Bench-to-Bedside Awards program extends to include intramural and extramural collaborations.

2006 — Nursing and Patient Care Services initiates a collaboration with the Indian Health Service to increase clinical nursing research capabilities.

2007 — The first of 1,000 volunteers are enrolled in a study led by the National Human Genome Research institute to test the use of human genome sequencing in a clinical research study.

January 25, 2007 — A ribbon-cutting ceremony is held for a new NIH metabolic clinical research unit that provides researchers from multiple institutes the opportunity to study obesity and related conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.

2008 — The Undiagnosed Diseases Program is established, led by the National Human Genome Research Institute, the NIH Office of Rare Diseases, and the NIH Clinical Center to help and learn from patients who have eluded diagnosis.

2008 — Clinical Center nurses undertake a multi-year project to define the clinical research domain of practice and lead the way in establishing it as a recognized nursing specialty practice.

2008 — An adaptation of the Clinical Center course “ Introduction to the Principles and Practice of Clinical Research ” is presented in Beijing.

2008 — The Clinical Center begins a partnership with the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and the Department of Defense to conduct clinical research studies in the fields of neuroscience and regenerative medicine. The research involves military and civilian populations.

2009 — Two new trans-NIH imaging resources are initiated, the Center for Interventional Oncology and the Center for Infectious Diseases Imaging .

July 2009 — The Biomedical Translational Research Information System , launches its NIH-wide intramural research data repository allowing investigators to view identified data from their active protocols. By December, intramural researchers are able to access de-identified data from clinical and research systems across the NIH intramural programs. BTRIS is designed to facilitate hypothesis generation, data gathering, and analysis.

2009 — The Department of Transfusion Medicine begins use of a prototype cell expansion system to automate bone marrow stromal cell expansion.

2009 — Computed tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography /CT equipment purchased by the Clinical Center is now required to routinely record radiation dose exposure in a patient's hospital-based electronic medical record.

January 2010 — The Pharmacy Department opens a state-of-the-art pharmaceutical development facility where staff formulate and analyze vaccines and medications not available from manufacturers. These products account for one-third of the drugs (including placebos and varying strengths) that the Clinical Center uses in its research protocols.

April 2010 — The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases seven-bed Special Clinical Studies Unit opens, with advanced isolation and extended-stay capabilities.

June 2011 — The Clinical Center graduates 12 interns from the pilot NIH- Project SEARCH internship program, providing employment opportunities and experience for young adults with developmental disabilities.

September 2011 — The Clinical Center is named the 2011 recipient of the Lasker~Bloomberg Public Service Award from the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation. The award honors the Clinical Center for serving as a model institution that has transformed scientific advances into innovative therapies and provided high-quality care to patients.

October 2011 — The Clinical Center acquires one of the first fully integrated whole-body simultaneous positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging devices.

February 2012 — The Clinical Center established a Memorandum of Understanding allowing NIH intramural clinical studies of children under the age of two in the Clinical and Translational Science Award clinical unit at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC.

March 2012 — A new Joint Taskforce between the Clinical Center and the Food and Drug Administration was created to consider exceptions to existing Investigational New Drug policies and procedures for extraordinary clinical circumstances.

August 2012 — Researchers from the NIH Clinical Center and National Human Genome Research Institute published a novel use of genome sequencing to help quell Klebsiella pneumonia bacteria outbreak at the Clinical Center in Science and Translational Medicine.

August 2012 — The NIH Clinical Center announces a new grant program, Opportunities for Collaborative Research at the hospital, which will support partnerships to expand engagement with extramural investigators interested in collaborating with intramural researchers, using the Clinical Center’s unique resources.

September 2012 — The first class of the new NIH Medical Research Scholars Program started the year-long research enrichment program, engaging in a mentored basic, clinical, or translational research project that matches their professional interests and career goals.

October 2013 — The Clinical Center’s Drs. Julie Segre, Evan Snitkin, Tara Palmore, and David Henderson earn the title "Federal Employees of the Year" for their breakthrough in tracking and controlling of a cluster of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections at the Clinical Center with the use of DNA sequencing.

March 2014 — The The NIH Clinical Center is opened to non-government researchers through three-year renewable research grants of up to $500,000 per year. The new program will allow scientists to collaborate with NIH investigators in a highly specialized hospital setting as they work toward translating promising laboratory discoveries into improved disease diagnosis, prevention, and treatment.

October 2014 — The NIH Clinical Center admits its first patient with the Ebola virus , which causes an acute, serious illness which is often fatal if untreated. The patient was treated in the Special Clinical Studies Unit which is specifically designed to provide high-level isolation capabilities and is staffed by infectious diseases and critical care specialists. She was discharged Oct. 24, declared free of the Ebola virus, after five negative PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests.

September 2015 — The NIH Clinical Center was announced as the first federal medical facility to be recognized by Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Analytics. The Clinical Center was awarded the research hospital Stage 7 certification, the highest level attainable, for its electronic medical record adoption model, eliminating the use of paper charts and maintaining a superior electronic medical record system for inpatient care.

March 2016 — A photon-counting computed tomography (CT) scanner is used in patients for the first time at the NIH Clinical Center. The prototype technology is expected to replicate the image quality of conventional CT scanning, but may also provide health care specialists with an enhanced look inside the body through multi-energy imaging.

January 2017 — Dr. James K. Gilman serves as the first chief executive officer of the NIH Clinical Center.

August 2017 — " First in Human " a three-part documentary series about the NIH Clinical Center’s staff and patients airs. The program, produced by The Discovery Channel, highlights the innovation and hard work that takes place in the hospital, depicts how challenging illness are diagnosed and treated and provides an inside look at the successes and setbacks that are a part of experimental medicine.

August 2017 — Researchers from the NIH Clinical Center's Rehabilitation Medicine Department created the first robotic exoskeleton specifically designed to treat crouch (or flexed-knee) gait in children. Crouch gait, the excessive bending of the knees while walking, is a common and debilitating condition in children with cerebral palsy. The exoskeleton provides powered knee extension assistance to support patients at key points during the walking cycle.

July 2018 — The NIH Clinical Center opens a Hospice Unit as a part of its Medical Oncology section. The unit is comprised of two rooms that have been converted into a home-like environment where families can stay with adult patients who are nearing end of life. Each suite has a bedroom and a communal space, including a kitchen and family sitting area.

October 2020 — NIH Clinical Center researcher Dr. Harvey J. Alter wins the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contributions to the discovery of the hepatitis C virus. Alter, a Senior Scholar in the hospital’s Department of Transfusion Medicine, shares the award with Michael Houghton, PhD, from the University of Alberta in Canada and Charles M. Rice, PhD, from Rockefeller University in New York City. Dr. Alter’s career at NIH has spanned more than 50 years where he focused his research on the occurrence of hepatitis in patients who had received blood transfusions.

October 2021 — The NIH Clinical Center unveils Treasure Tour , a free game application aimed at children, teens and their families to better help them understand the layout of the hospital, the programs and services offered onsite and the procedures and tests patients might undergo. Treasure Tour provides a look at six different patient care areas of the Clinical Center. Players can explore the hospital's pediatric clinic, one of the day hospitals, an inpatient unit, the phlebotomy lab, radiology and imaging sciences and the Department of Perioperative Medicine. All are presented in a kid-friendly way and are easily recognizable to anyone who has visited, or will soon visit, the hospital. Treasure Tour can be played on web-based platforms and downloaded to iOS devices in the App Store or to Android devices in the Google Play Store.

2022 — The NIH Clinical Center expands pediatric services ; looking at early interventions that may cure diseases and prevent negative outcomes that can occur in some rare diseases. The hospital's Pediatric Consult Service became the Department of Pediatrics, and one of the first initiatives was to establish the Pediatric Hospital Medicine (PHM) service with the goal of creating 24/7 pediatric, age appropriate care by in-house hospitalists.

CC Legislative Chronology

July 1, 1944 — Public Law 78-410, the Public Health Service Act, authorized establishment of the Clinical Center.

July 8, 1947 — Under P.L. 80-165, research construction provisions of the Appropriations Act for FY 1948 provided funds "For the acquisition of a site, and the preparation of plans, specifications, and drawings, for additional research buildings and a 600-bed clinical research hospital and necessary accessory buildings related thereto to be used in general medical research."

December 12, 1980 — Senate Joint Resolution 213 designates the Clinical Center as the "Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health."

September 12, 1996 — House Resolution 3755, Section 218, named the new clinical research center at the National Institutes of Health as the Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center.

Biographical Sketch of Clinical Center Chief Executive Officer Dr. James K. Gilman

Selected as the first chief executive officer (CEO) for the NIH Clinical Center in December 2016, Dr. Gilman oversees day-to-day operations and management of the research hospital on NIH's Bethesda campus – one of the largest such facilities in the world. Dr. Gilman guides the overall performance of the Clinical Center, focusing particularly on setting a high bar for patient safety and quality of care, including the development of new hospital operations policies.

Dr. Gilman earned a degree in biological engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in 1974 and an MD at the Indiana University School of Medicine in 1978. He is board certified in both Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Diseases and is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the American College of Physicians.

Dr. Gilman served 35 years in the U.S. Army, culminating as major general of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, Fort Detrick, Maryland. He led several Army hospitals during his career — Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas; Walter Reed Health Care System, Washington, D.C.; and Bassett Army Community Hospital, Fort Wainwright, Alaska. He also served as director of Health Policy and Services responsible for all aspects of professional activities and healthcare policy in the Office of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army Medical Command.

Following his retirement from the U.S. Army in 2013 as a major general, Dr. Gilman served as executive director of Johns Hopkins Military & Veterans Institute in Baltimore.

Clinical Center Directors


Jack Masur	1948 1956	1951 1969
John A. Trautman	1951	1954
Donald W. Patrick	1954	1956
Thomas C. Chalmers	1970	1973
Robert S. Gordon, Jr.	1974	1975
Mortimer B. Lipsett	1976	1982
John L. Decker	1983	1990
Saul Rosen (Acting)	1990	1994
John I. Gallin	1994	2017

Clinical Center Chief Executive Officers


James K. Gilman	2017	present

Major Programs

As America's research hospital, the NIH Clinical Center leads the global effort in training today's investigators and discovering tomorrow's cures.

The Clinical Center's mission is to provide a versatile clinical research environment enabling the NIH mission to improve human health by:

Investigating the pathogenesis of disease
Conducting first-in-human clinical trials with an emphasis on rare diseases and diseases of high public health impact
Developing state-of-the-art diagnostic, preventive, and therapeutic interventions
Training the current and next generation of clinical researchers
Ensuring that clinical research is ethical, efficient, and of high scientific quality

Major components: Administrative Management; Bioethics; Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics; Clinical Research Informatics; Clinical Research Training and Medical Education; Communications and Media Relations; Credentials Services; Critical Care Medicine; Edmond J. Safra Family Lodge; Financial Resource Management; Hospital Epidemiology; Housekeeping and Fabric Care; Hospitality Services; Internal Medicine Consults; Laboratory Medicine; Laboratory for Informatics Development; Management Analysis and Reporting; Materials Management; Medical Records; Nursing; Nutrition; Pain and Palliative Care; Patient Recruitment; Perioperative Medicine; Pharmacy; Purchasing and Contracts; Rehabilitation Medicine; Transfusion Medicine; Pediatric Consults; Protocol Services; Radiology and Imaging Sciences; Social Work; Space and Facility Management; Spiritual Care Ministry; Veterinary Care; Workforce and Management Development.

This page last reviewed on March 5, 2024

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Facilities and Infrastructure

We support cutting-edge research facilities and infrastructure that span the globe, from mountaintop observatories and ocean vessels to powerful electromagnets and supercomputers.

Every day, researchers use NSF's facilities and infrastructure to devise new materials for manufacturing and medicine, improve responses to natural catastrophes, understand weather and climate patterns, and explore extreme environments — from celestial bodies to the Earth's poles and ocean depths.

Find funding for research infrastructure
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Enabling discovery and innovation

By providing state-of-the-art research facilities and infrastructure, we empower scientists and engineers to explore, experiment and discover new frontiers.

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Major Research Instrumentation (MRI)
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Mid-scale Research Infrastructure-2 (Mid-scale RI-2)

Addressing societal challenges

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Enhancing training and workforce development

We provide access to research facilities and infrastructure across the U.S., ensuring the nation educates and maintains a skilled, diverse and forward-thinking science and engineering workforce.

Our major facilities

U.S. Academic Research Fleet

Featuring over a dozen research vessels ranging in size, endurance and capabilities, the U.S. Academic Research Fleet supports research on the structure, dynamics, chemistry and biology of the ocean.

U.S. Antarctic Program

NSF has managed the U.S. science presence across the Antarctic continent for more than 60 years. NSF-managed facilities and infrastructure there include:

Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station
McMurdo Station
Palmer Station
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Geodetic Facility for the Advancement of Geosciences

GAGE is a distributed facility that enables a diverse research community to make advances in understanding Earth processes that would otherwise not be possible — providing broad access to geodetic instrumentation, field training and support, and data services.

Green Bank Observatory

Since its inception in 1956, Green Bank Observatory — home to the largest fully steerable, single-dish radio telescope in the world — has advanced astronomy in countless ways, studying the origins and evolution of the universe and even searching for signs of intelligent alien life.

IceCube Neutrino Observatory

NSF's IceCube Neutrino Observatory is an enormous and unusual telescope: a grid of thousands of sensors embedded in a cubic kilometer of ice deep in the Antarctic ice sheet that allows it to detect tiny, elusive neutrinos — the least understood particles in the Standard Model of particle physics.

International Ocean Discovery Program

IODP is an international partnership of scientists, research institutions and funding organizations that explores the Earth's ocean basins. NSF provides support for the ocean-drilling research vessel JOIDES Resolution , conducting sea-floor drilling around the world to study Earth's oceans and paleoclimate.

Large Hadron Collider

NSF supports two particle physics detectors — ATLAS and CMS — at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. LHC is the most powerful particle accelerator ever constructed, making it the premier facility in the world for research in elementary particle physics.

Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory

LIGO is the most sophisticated detector of its kind ever created. In 2015, mere days after its advanced instruments were switched on, LIGO detected gravitational waves for the first time, confirming a major prediction of Albert Einstein's 1915 general theory of relativity.

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NSF's NOIRLab

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SAGE is a distributed national facility that develops and supports instrumentation for the earth sciences, earthquake research, global real-time earthquake monitoring, and nuclear test ban verification.

Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick

Research scientists at the IRF-Frederick work with a number of viruses: An electron micrograph of Ebola virus (virus green, cell purple) is in the upper left and SARS-CoV-2 (virus orange, cell blue) is in the lower right.

The Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick (IRF-Frederick) serves as a collaborative resource that facilitates multidisciplinary research to understand, treat, prevent, and eradicate diseases caused by novel, emerging, and highly virulent viruses. The IRF-Frederick is part of the NIAID’s Division of Clinical Research (DCR) within NIH.

The IRF-Frederick collaborates with internal (NIAID) and extramural investigators to conduct research on viruses, such as those causing high-consequence disease (e.g., Ebola virus and SARS-CoV-2) and those included on the NIAID Priority Pathogens list . Additional resources in a dedicated biosafety level 2/3 (BSL-2/3) imaging facility study simian/simian-human immunodeficiency virus (SIV/SHIV).

The IRF-Frederick has the capability to conduct BSL-2, BSL-3, and BSL-4 research. It is one of the few facilities in the world able to perform medical imaging to evaluate animals in BSL-4 containment. In addition to animal models of disease, the IRF-Frederick uses innovative approaches—including high-throughput drug screening, targeted genomic sequencing, custom immunological and serological analyses, and organ-chip model development—to examine pathogenesis of viral pathogens.

Learn how to work with the IRF-Frederick.

Main Areas of Focus

Facilitating the development of effective countermeasures to mitigate major public-health events related to emerging or reemerging infectious diseases or biological weapons attacks
Advancing medical diagnostics and cutting-edge technologies for high-consequence pathogens
Using imaging technologies to understand infectious disease pathogenesis and to assist in the rational design of medical countermeasures and therapeutic strategies
Supporting clinical trials and research studies that lead to improved patient outcomes
Building local, national, and international capacity to respond to diseases caused by NIAID Priority Pathogens and other emerging viral pathogens

Resources for Researchers

The IRF-Frederick has the following capabilities and collaborative research support opportunities available to internal (NIAID) and extramural researchers. Contact information is included, so researchers can reach out to someone to guide them through the process.

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Animal Models of Disease
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Perform a keyword search of opportunities offered by the IRF-Frederick .

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Research Facilities

by the WBDG Subcommittee

Within This Page

Building attributes, classification, additional resources.

As symbols of the Nation's technological progress, research facilities are essential to the discoveries and breakthroughs of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Thousands of public and private sector scientists and engineers from industries such as pharmaceutical, biomedical, manufacturing, and biotechnology use all types of laboratories and instruments to advance the frontiers of knowledge. At times, an entire facility may be built to support the specialized instruments required for research, including accelerators, light sources, research reactors, neutron beam facilities, plasma, fusion science facilities, genome centers, advanced computational centers, wind tunnels, model testing facilities, hot cells, and launch facilities.

There are many kinds of research facilities. Within the WBDG they are divided into two major groups: Animal Research Facilities and Research Laboratories. Research Laboratories are further categorized by type (e.g., wet labs and dry labs), and by sectors (e.g., academic, corporate, and government labs).

Many existing research facilities, especially those in government agencies and universities, are at an age when renovations are needed to support the state-of-the-art research required to be at the cutting edge of science and technology. While this section of the WBDG provides information on the design and construction of new research facilities, the principles covered can be applied to renovation projects as well.

Exterior William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL)

Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) , at DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has unique and state-of-the-art research resources. Richland, WA.

Example Design and Construction Criteria

For GSA, the unit costs for this building type are based on the construction quality and design features in the following table . This information is based on GSA's benchmark interpretation and could be different for other owners.

Research facilities present a unique challenge to designers with their inherent complexity of systems, health and safety requirements, long-term flexibility and adaptability needs, energy use intensity, and environmental impacts. There are many different types of research facilities. Within the WBDG they are divided into two major groups, which are then further categorized by type and by sector:

Animal Research Facilities , also known as vivariums, are specially designed building types that accommodate exquisitely controlled environments for the care and maintenance of experimental animals.

Research Laboratories are complex, technically sophisticated, and mechanically intensive structures that are expensive to build and to maintain. Therefore, the design, construction, and renovation of such facilities are a major challenge for all involved.

Type: Wet ; Dry
Sector: Academic ; Government ; Private Sector

Aerial photo for The National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md.

The National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, provides a crucial link in rapidly moving research findings from the laboratory to mainstream medical practice.

A new model of laboratory design is emerging, one that creates lab environments that are responsive to present needs and capable of accommodating future demands. Several key needs are driving the development of a new model. See WBDG Trends in Lab Design for a complete overview.

Federal Agencies

For examples of facilities to support instruments of science, see DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory
Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Construction & Facilities Management
Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Administration and Resources Management
General Services Administration, Office of Design and Construction: Office of the Chief Architect
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Facilities and Real Estate Division
National Institutes of Health, Office of Research Facilities, Development and Operations developed the NIH Design Requirements Manual to provide standards to assist planners, architects, and engineers in designing biomedical and animal research facilities for the NIH.

Organizations/Associations

A Design Guide for Energy-Efficient Research Laboratories —A reference that helps facility owners, managers, and designers apply energy-efficiency features in laboratories.
Environmental Performance Criteria (EPC) —The Labs21 Environmental Performance Criteria is a rating system specifically designed for laboratory facilities. It builds on the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED® Green Building Rating System .
Labs21 Design Process Manual —Includes a "quick reference" sustainable strategies checklist as well as links to key resources for each stage of the design process.
Labs21 Tool Kit
Labs21 Annual Conference Presentations Archive
U.S. Green Building Council's LEED® —Because research facilities present a unique challenge for energy efficiency and sustainable design, the USGBC formed the LEED-AGL Committee to develop a guide that helps project teams apply LEED credits in the design and construction of laboratory facilities.

Publications

ASHRAE 110 Method of Testing Performance of Laboratory Fume Hoods
ASHRAE Handbook
ASHRAE Laboratory Design Guide
Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories (BMBL) 5th Edition by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 2009.
Building Type Basics for Research Laboratories , 2nd Edition by Daniel Watch. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008. ISBN# 978-0-470-16333-7.
Guidelines for Planning and Design of Biomedical Research Laboratory Facilities by The American Institute of Architects, Center for Advanced Technology Facilities Design. Washington, D.C.: The American Institute of Architects, 1999.
R&D Magazine —Provides information on a variety of topics related to laboratories. The R&D Lab of the Year award is presented annually to outstanding laboratory facilities throughout the United States.
Building Research Information Knowledgebase (BRIK) —an interactive portal offering online access to peer-reviewed research projects and case studies in all facets of building, from predesign, design, and construction through occupancy and reuse.
GSA Sustainable Facilities Tool (SFTool) —SFTool's immersive virtual environment addresses all your sustainability planning, designing and procurement needs.

WBDG Participating Agencies

National Institute of Building Sciences Innovative Solutions for the Built Environment 1090 Vermont Avenue, NW, Suite 700 | Washington, DC 20005-4950 | (202) 289-7800 © 2024 National Institute of Building Sciences. All rights reserved. Disclaimer

Research Centers and Institutes

The University of Washington is known for its strategic, multidisciplinary research. Within our extensive network of Centers and Institutes, UW researchers, staff, and students work across disciplines to extend the boundaries of knowledge.

Contact: Melissa Cox, [email protected]

Find a Center or Institute

Interested in learning more about focused work in a specific area or finding a collaborator to support your efforts? Search the:

List of UW Research Centers and Institutes

Policy, Regulation, and Guidance

Guidelines for Establishing a Center/Institute
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Or support offices.

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OR Research Units

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Inside the Deepest Underground Lab in the US

Released on 06/09/2022

[Narrator] This is

the Sanford Underground Research Facility,

the deepest underground lab in the United States.

[gate clattering open]

It's a converted mine

where more than 10 experiments are being conducted,

experiments that can only take place

far beneath the surface of the earth.

We will tour three different labs

where scientists are studying dark matter,

the nature of neutrinos,

and geothermal energy.

Finally, we'll look at the construction

of one of the largest particle physics experiments

in the world.

This is Wired Field Trip.

[uptempo music]

[fan whirring]

4,850 feet below the surface

researchers make their way to their experiments

every morning.

[elevator shaft clacking]

On the deepest level,

you might think that scientists

are studying the Earth's core,

but instead, these physicists need nearly a mile of rock

to shield their experiments from the sun and space.

[dark beats]

First up, the LUX-Zeplin experiment,

a dark matter detector known as LZ.

LZ is a dark matter experiment

trying to directly detect the dark matter particles

that we think are flying through the earth all the time.

[Narrator] So, what exactly is dark matter?

We think we know as a species

how much stuff there is in our universe

but it turns out that the stuff that we understand,

the stuff that makes us up, me up,

the things that you see around me,

is only about 5% of that total.

So, 95% of the universe's content is a mystery to humanity.

[Narrator] Dark matter is often referred to

as the invisible glue that holds everything together.

Physicists and astronomers

have been hunting it for decades, all the way up to Hugh.

Here's how the dark matter detector works.

So there are many, many layers to LZ.

You start at the center with a large bucket of liquid xenon.

Xenon is the heart of our experiment,

it's the target material.

It's what we hope the dark matter is gonna interact with.

[Narrator] This is a cross section of the experiment.

In the center is the element xenon in liquid form.

The xenon is housed in a chamber that includes many layers,

not only various elements like titanium and gadolinium

but a huge water tank.

And of course, 4,850 feet of rock.

So there are charge particles

constantly hitting our atmosphere.

Some come from our galaxy,

some come from outside of our galaxy.

Some we don't know where they come from.

But they're hitting our atmosphere

and they make showers and showers of particles.

Those things will light up our detector constantly.

If you try to turn LZ on on the surface,

it would light up like a Christmas tree

and you wouldn't be able to see anything at all.

In our depth,

the rate of those rays is way knocked down

so that we can actually run our experiment.

[Narrator] The detector also includes

photo multiplier tubes to detect light signals

that could show the presence of dark matter.

Effectively, what we hope is will happen

is that dark matter will hit a xenon nucleus,

it'll create a little flash of light,

a little flash of charge

and we'll collect those things to see the signal.

[Narrator] And all of that

is housed in this whole facility.

Hugh is going to walk us through

what goes into maintaining the detector.

So behind me at the moment

is part of our cryogenic system.

To be liquid,

xenon has to be held at a hundred degrees below zero Celsius

or 165 Kelvin.

So this steel dewar behind us

is filled with liquid nitrogen.

And it is connected to a couple of tubes

that run down into the detector.

[poppy beats]

So here we have the wall of the LZ water tank.

It was built underground,

as you can see, welded from these sections.

So this is filled with something like 70 gallons of water.

So if I open this,

70,000 gallons of water would rush out and drown us all.

So in front of us here,

we have what we call the xenon tower,

which is another part of the cryogenics.

If you see these sort of big boa, flexible lines,

there's nitrogen running through those lines

to come down to the xenon tower

where we have a few heat exchangers that cools liquid xenon.

The detector itself has 10 tons of xenon.

[Narrator] That's about a quarter

of the world's yearly xenon production.

And one of the reasons we really like xenon

for this experiment is that it is very dense as a liquid.

It's something like three kilograms per liter.

So, that is denser than aluminum.

So, if you put an aluminum block

in our detector, it would float.

[Narrator] Inside the detector

is one of the most radio quiet places on earth.

They've reduced the amount of radiation

down to almost nothing.

And there's so much more that goes into it.

So these are our electronics racks.

Here's our spare parts.

A neutron generators.

Cryo cooler.

So in this room we have our xenon compressors.

So there's xenon flowing through these gas lines,

constantly being pumped to purify the detector.

[Narrator] The majority of this experiment

is the researchers collecting data

and waiting and waiting and waiting for something to happen.

So, what happens if they discover dark matter?

So, dark matter right now is probably one of the biggest

if not the biggest mysteries in particle physics.

So, it would be a huge, huge deal if we discovered it

and it would explain this huge chunk

of our universe that is missing

and would open up a whole new avenue of research.

But there is a chance

that the dark matter properties are so weak

or so different from what we're looking for,

that we will never see it.

And it's quite possible

that when we end our dark matter detection program

we will never have found the actual particle.

So that's a scary proposition, but it's true.

[Narrator] Before LZ,

there was a smaller detector.

After LZ, there could be a bigger detector.

The more they continue hunting,

the more they can rule out what dark matter is, or isn't.

Nearly a mile underground,

possibly the most concentration of xenon in the universe,

they continue to wait until a small signal

changes our understanding of where we came from.

This is only the first experiment we're looking at today.

Let's go check out another called the Majorana Demonstrator.

This is particle physicist, Ralph Massarczyk.

So here we are a mile underground

studying the nature of neutrinos.

The Majorana demonstrator is looking for a concept known as

neutrinoless double beta decay.

Neutrinoless double beta decay

is a very, very rare decay

that can happen only in a handful of isotopes.

So, if some of these particles vanished during the decay,

it would give us a hint

of how the universe could be created.

[Narrator] The theory that Ralph's team is working on

is that neutrinos, the subatomic particle

smaller than electrons, are their own antiparticle.

In order to study this theory,

the demonstrator is even more sensitive

than the LZ dark matter detector.

We have to enter a clean room.

The principle is the same as the LZ shield layers;

reduce background radiation.

Even human bodies give off radiation.

That's why the researchers are decked out

in personal protective equipment, including our crew.

Here we are at the Majorana clean room,

and we are gonna look at the detector today

and see how it's made.

[Narrator] In the LZ experiment,

the element the physicists

were hoping to see reactions in was xenon.

In Majorana, it's the isotope germanium.

There's only a handful of isotopes

which can do double beta decay.

Germanium was one of them.

We often compare finding double beta decay

to listen to like a single conversation in a full stadium.

Maybe you go to a Beyonce concert and it's loud

and you wanna talk to your neighbor and he whispers.

That's what you're trying to achieve.

So every kind of radiation is a background, is a noise,

which you constantly try to overcome.

The Majorana experiment is shielded

against natural radiation with several layers of material.

Starts on the outside with roughly 12 inches of poly,

then a very heavy lead shield.

So you see the size of a lead break is roughly

this times four times eight inches.

And there's a few thousands of them installed in the shield.

And then, to the core of the experiment

where we have our electroform copper

which is the cleanest copper in the world,

on which is grown underground here.

And inside this shield we have this,

what we call detector modules.

So, you see this copper vessel

and inside the vessel are our germanium detectors

where we try to look for double beta decay.

A germanium detector is roughly the size of a hockey puck.

And they're arranged here in an area of detectors.

The signals go along this cross arm

through all the shield to this readout electronics,

which are located here behind the shield.

This whole assembly weighs several tons.

So what we do is we place everything on this,

on ball bearings down here, and very slowly push it inside.

It has to be done very slowly

because there's a lot of fragile electronics

and you don't want it to vibrate or to shake or to break.

[Narrator] In order to assemble the detector,

the researchers have to work in these sealed boxes

that also reduce background radiation.

So this is our glove box where we actually

assemble the individual detector units,

build bigger assembly of strings of detectors.

And then also assemble the whole module.

Inside the glove box,

you see all the individual copper pieces.

If you look at these pieces,

it can be as small as very tiny nuts,

but these copper pieces also all go all the way up

to the several hundred pounds heavy shield plates

which you saw before in the outer shield.

So, at the end,

you are actually gonna wear four layers of gloves.

The two gloves we are already wearing,

the rubber gloves and an innermost layer for cleanliness.

And now, you can imagine

you have to pick up very tiny pieces like these ones.

This is roughly the size of a germanium detector

and you have to assemble it.

A simple test, like just putting a nut

on a bolt, becomes complicated

as soon as you have several layers of glove on.

[Narrator] What else is a part of this experiment?

Here, you see the readout electronics

of the germanium detectors.

This is a hovercraft.

This is the copper baths.

[Narrator] One of the more unique elements

of the Majorana demonstrator

is that researchers are growing copper.

It starts with this very pure copper nuggets.

And they're put into a bath with acid

where, through an electric field, they're very slowly

only the copper drifts to this bigger mandrels.

[Narrator] When the copper is ready,

the scientists move it into the machine room

to make parts out of it.

Once they come off, they look like this.

So you have this massive copper pieces

which are then get flattened out.

And the copper pieces end up like this.

[Narrator] All of this chemistry, engineering and physics

goes into discovering the nature of neutrinos.

So what happens if they find what they're looking for?

If we're able to show

that neutrinos are their own antiparticles,

it would show that the standard model as it exists

is not complete.

In each process, the same amount of,

if matter goes in, matter should come out.

If this is not suddenly not the case anymore,

you open up a whole can of worms. [laughing]

[Narrator] These physicists are searching

for invisible particles

that our entire understanding of science can't account for.

Do you believe in magic at all?

No. [laughing]

I don't believe in magic in the sense of

there's a magician who can make things disappear,

but the way everything fits together,

the way that particles drift in an electric field,

the way a germanium detector works

is its own little magic.

Physics itself has its own magic.

I'm lucky enough that I'm allowed to work in what I love.

So, I love it.

Gonna be a lifelong pursuit for me.

I hope. [laughing]

[Narrator] The researchers are entering

the next phase of the Majorana Demonstrator Project

which will go on for another couple of years.

Let's get out of the 4850 and go to another level.

[indistinct talking]

Welcome to the 4,100

where we're studying geothermal energy.

[Narrator] Hunter and Paul

are part of one of the biggest geothermal research projects

in the country.

Geothermal's been around for a long time.

And people have learned over the last few hundred years

that they could use the earth

to both heat and cool their house.

And they did this through technology

called geothermal heat pumps.

This research focuses on

a different kind of geothermal energy,

and that is called EGS,

or enhanced geothermal systems.

[Narrator] Basically,

not every country can be like Iceland

where there's a high concentration of volcanoes.

The next generation of geothermal research

is exploring the technology of hydraulic fracturing.

So the idea for EGS is quite simple, actually.

You drill two wells side by side.

You create a fracture that connects these two wells

and then you can circulate water

from the surface down the borehole, through the fracture

and produce steam or hot fluid out of the other borehole.

And that is where the energy comes from.

Now, just imagine you set those boreholes up like a radiator

and you put fractures one right after the other.

Now you have something that could produce power

for tens of millions of people.

[Narrator] EGS CoLab is studying how the earth interacts

with fluids underground.

We drilled nine boreholes with five of them

targeted for stimulation and production, basically.

[Narrator] The goal of stimulation holes

is to stress test rocks to gather as much data as possible.

These are the five boreholes

in which the straddle packers will be deployed in.

Packers are used in hydraulic fracturing,

both in experiments and also in industry.

This is a packer element and this is a packer element.

You can think of these as Kevlar balloons.

And so, what we do is we inflate these with water.

They seal the borehole, and then if we're pumping water in,

it comes out of this little hole

and it fills up the volume in the borehole

between these two balloons.

That will generate a fracture, or it will open a fracture

if the fracture already exists.

[Narrator] Today, they are sending a camera

down the borehole to understand it more.

So what we're pushing in here

is called an optical televiewer.

And what that is is a camera

at the end of the probe

that's basically taking 360 degree pictures of the borehole.

And what we're seeing on this screen right now

is a live image of the televiewer.

You're getting a picture of what the core left behind

the open borehole and the rock formation.

[Narrator] Let's walk down the cavern

and take a look at the rock.

These are core

that were extracted during the drilling of these boreholes.

This is the Yates amphibolite,

basically a very dense crystal and metamorphic rock.

You're talking a billion year old plus rock.

So, this is like the foundations of life on earth

and so forth.

This is a neat piece.

So, here we are catching the Yates amphibolite here,

but also a quartz vein on this side.

So, a pretty neat 360 degree view

of an intersection with different types of rock.

[Narrator] What else is part of the experiment?

This is a micro seismic

and source seismic acquisition system.

These are fiber enclosures.

This is our RO unit.

Chiller unit.

Triplex pump.

This is the DAQ box.

There are the brains of the system.

This is an alcove.

It's also where our coffee maker is

because we're super sophisticated

[Narrator] EGS CoLab's data

aims to be proving ground for geothermal energy

around the country.

Before we leave today, let's quickly go back

to the 4,850 level

and check out what's down this cavern.

[fans whirring]

Down here in the darkness,

engineers are building the single largest physics experiment

Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment

is a massive series of detectors

a mile underground here at the Sanford Lab

that's going to detect neutrinos that are generated

at the Firmilab in Batavia, Illinois.

And so, those neutrinos

will pass directly through the earth to here.

And we'll be able to see how neutrinos oscillate

over that distance.

The detectors that we're building

are going to hold 17,000 tons of liquid argon each.

And to give you an idea of the scale of what that is,

that's 63 feet across, 63 feet tall,

and about 220 feet overall length per detector.

And we've planned for four of these detectors.

So, you can picture the caverns

that have to be built to house those large detectors.

So, when the neutrino reacts,

it's going to create a flash of light, if you will.

And by creating this drift inside of the argon,

we can actually move that flash

in a way that we can observe it.

So, overall construction of the LBNF and DUNE Project

will take over 10 years.

Building underground is like building a ship in a bottle.

We have to disassemble everything

into small enough pieces to take it down underground.

And when we get underground, we have to reassemble it

in these large caverns, which are like the bottle.

Everything we do is going a mile down a shaft

and it's gotta fit inside that shaft.

There's no two ways around it.

We're not gonna build a larger shaft.

So everything has to consider that

as we're designing and building this facility

[Narrator] Even though these mine shafts

are around 90 years old,

they are still state of the art engineering.

The hoists at this facility are very unique.

In fact, there's four of them in the world

that are like this, and they're incredibly well designed.

They're a cylindrical conical drum.

And so that conical section allows it to

automatically slow down

without changing the motor speed at all.

As you go to the smaller diameter,

you're getting less distance per rotation

and that helps you with the torque

that's necessary to lift the conveyances.

Everything about this project is unprecedented.

The size of the caverns that are be being built

a mile underground; unprecedented.

The size of the detectors; unprecedented.

The size of the collaboration; not quite unprecedented,

but there's only about three that have ever happened

that are of this magnitude.

The type of science we're doing,

and the type of science that this facility

in general is doing is really unprecedented,

and is the type of things

that my grandkids will read about in textbooks

and be able to say, My granddad worked on that.

This is the experiment

that the particle physics community

is really focused on as their top priority.

[Narrator] There are so many other experiments going on

at the Stanford Underground Lab

that we don't have time for.

On this level,

biology experiments are looking at extremophiles.

On this level, equipment testing

for various industries in NASA.

Now, we have to go above the surface.

And that's our Wired Field Trip.

See you next time.

[inspiring music]

Inside the Lab That Starts Fires For Science

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Research Centers and Institutes

One of New York University's strengths is its vast array of institutes and centers that are not only an important part of the academic setting of the University, but are also a vital part of its cultural setting.

From leading international centers for research and education, to one of the most technologically advanced lecture halls and screening facilities in New York City, the varied institutes and centers at NYU serve as critical points of convergence for the University experience.

Research at our Schools

Jump to a list of research pages at individual schools.

A-Z Listing

Name

Faculty Research in Schools

The heart of academic and research enterprise are the schools. For more information regarding research at an individual school, follow the links below.

Arts and Science
College of Dentistry
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences - Math
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences - Computer Science
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences - Atmosphere Ocean Science
Institute of Fine Arts
Leonard N. Stern School of Business
Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
Rory Meyers College of Nursing
School of Professional Studies
School of Law
School of Medicine
Silver School of Social Work
Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
Tandon School of Engineering

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The Benefits and Challenges of Research Centers and Institutes in Academic Medicine: Findings from Six Universities and Their Medical Schools

Mallon, William T. EdD

Dr. Mallon is assistant vice president and director of organization and management studies, Association of American Medical Colleges, Washington, DC.

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Mallon, Association of American Medical Colleges, 2450 N St NW, Washington, DC 20037-1127; telephone: (202) 828-0424; e-mail: ( [email protected] ).

Purpose

To understand the benefits and challenges of using centers and institutes in the academic research enterprise, and to explore institutional strategies that capitalize on the strengths and ameliorate the weaknesses of the center/institute structure.

Method

Using a qualitative research design, the author and associates interviewed over 150 faculty members and administrators at six medical schools and their parent universities in 2004. Interview data were transcribed, coded, and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. This methodology generated rich descriptions and explanations of the six institutions, which can produce extrapolations to, but not necessarily findings that are generalizable to, other institutions and settings.

Results

Centers and institutes offer a number of benefits to academic institutions. Centers can aid in faculty recruitment and retention, facilitate collaboration in research, secure research resources, offer a sense of community and promote continued learning, afford organizational flexibility, and focus on societal problems and raise funds. Despite their many benefits, centers can also create tensions and present management challenges to institutional leaders. Centers can compete with departments over resources, complicate faculty recruitment, contribute to a fragmented mission, resist effective evaluation, pose governance problems, and impede junior faculty development.

Conclusions

Institutional leaders might capitalize on the strengths of centers through three strategies: (1) reward leaders who embrace a collaborative point of view and develop a culture that frowns upon empire building; (2) distinguish among the many entities that share the “center” or “institute” labels; and (3) acknowledge that departments must maintain their place in the organizational milieu.

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How do you design and build a successful research facility?

Sufficient accommodation.

Optimized layouts with defined spaces for storage, workspaces, services, meetings, casual discussions, training sessions and congregations make up for an efficient research facility that fosters an environment of growth and innovation. This happens by a thorough understanding of the space requirements of the numerous processes and activities that happen in a research laboratory. If the appropriate spaces and their adjacencies are not considered well before design and construction, it can pose a challenge to the facility at later stages. For instance, if sufficient storage is not provided, the redundant lab equipment will overflow on the workspaces, reducing their efficiency.

Adaptability & Flexibility

As a research project grows, there is a need to accommodate the increase in lab personnel, lab equipment and research departments. Sometimes the type of research in a department can change which leads to requirement of different equipment and researchers. So, design and engineering of the facility should be performed with flexibility as one of the primary design factors. Flexibility also allows the users to transform their environment as per the needs of their individual and collective activities. For instance, laboratories with movable furniture can easily be transformed into lecture halls or training centers. Multi-functional spaces are the future of efficient space designs.

Complex Requirements

Research facilities, unlike commercial real estate, brings forth many complex functional requirements that must cater to the complexities involved in the day to day lives of researchers. Right from ensuring safety and security from hazardous chemicals, to ensuring optimum indoor environment, the complex design challenges need to be resolved in the most effective manner. We’re dealing with sensitive equipment and tools, and substances that need to be climate controlled. Also researchers that need to conduct their intensive studies and create innovative solutions in an environment that offers them comfort, collaboration, and an assurance of safety.

Energy Efficiency & Management

The day to day operations happening at a research facility can lead to significant energy consumption and resource wastage. This makes them vulnerable to create a negative environmental impact. In order to make such facilities more energy efficient, several passive and active sustainable strategies can be adopted for the building’s design and engineering. Spaces can be planned in response to the site’s local conditions. Building materials and systems need to be energy efficient. Alternate renewable energy resources need to be introduced. Proper waste management systems must be employed. Building energy management systems (BEMS) can be deployed to monitor and control the energy consumption through data.

Resilience to Accidents

In places where researchers are constantly working with harmful chemicals and substances or sensitive equipment, chances of accidents are high. Improper design of these facilities can lead to an increase in such accidents. It can put precious human resources in the ways of harm and cause severe damage, all because of inefficient design and engineering of the built environment. While the researchers are taking a risk when working with hazardous substances, we must ensure their safety at all times. With proper ventilation, fire-safety, monitoring systems, and efficient circulation, users can focus on their research instead of worrying about hazards. IoT integration of services also prevents accidents.

Environment of Mutual Growth

Research facilities need to be places for collective growth of all involved researchers. Gone are the days when individual expertise and individual skills were more favored for completing a job. Today, with the rise of complexities, research organisations have realised the significance of collective efforts over individual ones. We need the research facilities to be designed with more and more spaces for casual chances encounters, interactions, team gatherings, training sessions, and flexible spaces for collective working. This leads to an empowering environment where the juniors learn from their seniors through workplace osmosis, and team members learn from each other’s knowledge.

Optimum Indoor Climate Control

The indoor environment of research laboratories is constantly affected by hazardous fumes and viral & bacterial pathogens. Being surrounded by them for a prolonged period of time can be harmful to the health of researchers. Inefficient extraction of fumes from the enclosed laboratory spaces can lead to chronic diseases. That’s why we need to focus on efficient smoke and fume extraction through the design and engineering of ventilation systems. Similarly, lab environments require specific indoor temperatures, not only for the thermal comfort of researchers, but also for requirements of certain chemicals and equipment. Building Management Systems can be beneficial to ensure optimum indoor climate control.

2 thoughts on “How do you design and build a successful research facility?”

I want to modify my lab in order to create a fantastic research facility for my company. The way you described optimum floor plans with designated areas for storage, workplaces, services, meetings, informal conversations, and training sessions is fantastic. I’ll seek out experts to assist me in designing the layout of my laboratory.

Request a quote for the design of an engineering research center for the university. Thanks

News Center

Northwestern receives $55 million to advance health research.

The Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute has received $55 million in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to accelerate development, evaluation and implementation of improved healthcare interventions.

The seven-year award is the largest active research grant at Northwestern and extends a legacy of NIH funding that began when the institute launched in 2008.

“Clinical and translational research does not happen in a bubble, it requires dedicated investigators and members of the public to advance human health,” said Richard D’Aquila, MD , the Howard Taylor Ricketts, MD, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and senior associate dean for clinical and translational research. “With generous support from the NIH and Northwestern, we will continue to work alongside our exceptional coalition of community and health system partners to help build a better framework for innovating and implementing discoveries in ever more inclusive ways.”

Co-led by principal investigators D’Aquila; Sara Becker, PhD , the Alice Hamilton Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences , and Clyde Yancy, MD, MSc , chief and Magerstadt Professor of Cardiology in the Department of Medicine, the Institute maintains its place as an anchor for Northwestern’s research enterprise.

“The collection of extraordinary faculty and staff who will manage this iteration of NUCATS are a testament to the transformational mindsets held by the institute’s leadership,” said Eric G. Neilson, MD , vice president for Medical Affairs and Lewis Landsberg Dean. “This funding allows us to further advance our mission of improving human health by investigating the mechanisms that drive the translation of discoveries toward real-world treatments.”

Awarded by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Science, the grant will fund activities that cultivate a culture of inclusive excellence to better capitalize on the full range of existing talent while enabling effective translation of discoveries for diverse populations. The Institute is also positioned to infuse implementation science methods into work across the translational continuum to improve public health and meet the needs of all.

“Implementation science can help us to accelerate and catalyze the uptake of evidence-based practice into routine clinical care,” said Becker, also director of Northwestern’s Center for Dissemination and Implementation Science (CTSA). “Northwestern is a national leader in this space. The NUCATS Institute will become a model CTSA hub that advances inclusive, innovative and implementable solutions to the evolving challenges that impede scalable public health progress.”

Yancy’s research in cardiology and health disparities addresses optimal treatment of heart failure. A seminal contribution was revealing that the predominant cause of heart failure among Black people is hypertension rather than the ischemic heart disease that is most often the putative cause in non-Black patients. His groundbreaking work informed how to optimize treatment strategies for Black patients including the first ever FDA-approved therapy for Black patients.

“Diversity in the biomedical workforce is more than representativeness; it is rather about excellence, diverse ideas and unique strategies that will enrich our ability to provide care for the entire population,” said Yancy, who is also vice dean for Diversity and Inclusion. “By addressing inequities with intentionality, we are positioned to understand and then overcome persistent systemic limitations that hurt those underrepresented and underserved and in turn impair best health for everyone. We commit to responsibly and courageously leading the path to inclusive excellence and belongingness.”

As one of more than 60 NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award-funded hubs, the NUCATS Institute is now charged with adding to generalizable knowledge about how to best accelerate new ideas and interventions into impact that improves health for all. The NIH calls this new charge conducting clinical and translational science, distinguishing it from an earlier charge to provide resources for all clinical and translational research.

“A core principle of translational science is to understand common causes of inefficiency and failure in translational research projects. One of the additional areas we will focus on — in collaboration with Northwestern’s Innovation and New Ventures Office and other partners — is better helping academic innovators to move discoveries from the laboratory through clinical trials and toward commercialization,” D’Aquila said.

Northwestern University and its affiliates the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and its Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute , Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and Northwestern Medicine comprise the NUCATS Institute. Clinicians and investigators at each affiliate are Northwestern faculty members and the partnering entities share a jointly operated, markedly grown academic medical center campus where faculty and trainees’ education, care and research activities cultivate a learning health system. The affiliates also have broad regional networks of sites/providers, facilitating community outreach. The NUCATS Institute will continue to serve as the glue that collaboratively aligns translational research and advances translational science across the four hub components.

The new CTSA activities are funded by NCATS grant UM1TR005121.

Oncoprotein activity increases prostate cancer progression, older adults in illinois at increased risk for suicide, understanding structural drivers of hiv and substance use.

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Stormwater Research Facility to develop erosion and sediment control design guidelines

Published: Aug 28, 2024 8:00 AM

By Dustin Duncan

Auburn University's Stormwater Research Facility (AU-SRF) has been tasked with creating design guidelines for erosion and sediment control practices used on highway construction sites to minimize stormwater pollution.

Michael Perez , director of the AU-SRF and Brasfield & Gorrie associate professor in civil and environmental engineering, is the principal investigator (PI) on the three-year, $750,000 grant from the National Academy of Sciences’ National Cooperative Highway Research Program.

He said the erosion and sediment control industry is currently driven by generally accepted but not scientifically evaluated design guidelines. The resiliency or the risk of failure of these practices are not defined clearly or difficult to quantify with current design methods.

"That's the unique thing about our lab, — we're taking practices that have been used for a long time that nobody's had the opportunity to actually investigate through controlled research experiments," Perez said. "We're putting science behind it and trying to really understand how they perform, and also provide improved designs with consideration to resiliency and risk of failure."

The project focuses both on design elements and installation techniques. For example, the guidelines developed by the AU-SRF could provide national guidance on how to design and install an effective silt fence, which is typically used on construction sites to control sediment from stormwater runoff.

"These guidelines will consider best placement, site characteristics, topography, climate, the area around which runoff is anticipated, the types of soils in the region and anything that could impact their performance" Perez said.

According to Perez, the AU-SRF will perform large-scale testing at its facility. Xing Fang , Arthur H. Feagin Chair Professor for water resources in civil and environmental engineering, is co-PI on the project, along with Wes Donald, research fellow in civil and environmental engineering. The University of Tennessee, Oklahoma State University, Fagan Consulting, LLC in Prattville and JEO Consulting Group are partnering with Auburn on this project.

"We're thinking through and evaluating the science throughout the design steps and performing hydrologic analyses to see how practices are expected to perform," Fang said. "We plan to understand how the practices are expected to behave and how they fail."

The plan at the end of the project is to develop a guidebook for designers developing plans for engineers and contractors. Perez said it should be something designers can take off the shelf and have the best practices available, ultimately leading to better protection of waterbodies and neighboring areas downstream of construction sites.

"It will give the tools to know 'this is what I'm installing, and this is where I'm installing it, and the proper size for the practice to function as intended" Perez said. "The designers using these guidelines will know there's been thorough research behind it and can be confident knowing they are doing the job right."

The AU-SRF is part of Auburn University's Highway Research Center (HRC). Anton Schindler, director of the HRC, said that the NCHRP is one of the most prestigious grants in the transportation industry.

“Research teams from all across the country compete for NCHRP projects and only one team is selected by a panel of experts,” Schindler said. “Being awarded an NCHRP project is thus a career-defining achievement and indicates that this Auburn University team is considered to be among the nation’s best by their peers.”

Michael Perez, director of the AU-SRF and Brasfield & Gorrie associate professor in civil and environmental engineering, is the principal investigator (PI) on the three-year, $750,000 grant from the National Academy of Sciences’ National Cooperative Highway Research Program.

Featured Faculty

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Recent Headlines

Two researchers in lab coats and goggles work with outdoor scientific equipment near a modern building.

Five Ways LiSA is Advancing Solar Fuels
Alternative Energy

Artificial photosynthesis could one day harness energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water into liquid fuels to power your car, and enable a process for creating chemicals and fertilizers that is better for the environment. But scientists first need new techniques to efficiently convert sunlight into solar fuels and chemicals at scale, and store them for later use.

Since its founding in 2020 , the Liquid Sunlight Alliance (LiSA) – a Fuels from Sunlight Energy Innovation Hub funded by the U.S. Department of Energy – has made advances in developing the science principles by which liquid fuels can be generated from sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water.

“LiSA is bringing solar fuels closer to reality. In just five years our researchers have achieved major milestones in artificial photosynthesis.” – Joel Ager, senior scientist and LiSA program lead at Berkeley Lab

Led by Caltech in close partnership with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), LiSA brings together more than 100 scientists from national lab partners at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and university partners at UC Irvine, UC San Diego, and the University of Oregon. This multi-institutional collaboration is focused on accelerating advances in solar fuels research by combining computationally driven experimentation with real-time observations using ultrafast X-rays and other advanced imaging techniques. By facilitating a national network of leading research capabilities, advanced instruments, and cutting-edge user facilities that are unique to national labs and universities, LiSA is paving the way for a solar fuels future.

“LiSA is bringing solar fuels closer to reality,” said Joel Ager, a senior scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Chemical Sciences Division who manages the Northern California LiSA facility at Berkeley Lab. “In just five years our researchers have achieved major milestones in artificial photosynthesis, from new materials and devices that convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into ethylene and other chemical fuels, to advances in computer modeling, data visualization, and X-ray imaging techniques that could make the conversion process more efficient and durable at the commercial scale.”

Here are five potential breakthroughs LiSA research teams led by Berkeley Lab have achieved so far.

A researcher wearing safety goggles and blue gloves works with intricate lab equipment, adjusting tubes and wires in a lab setting.

1. Made solar energy available 24/7

Photoelectrochemical devices use sunlight to trigger chemical reactions that convert CO 2 and water into liquid fuels. This artificial photosynthesis technology has the potential to revolutionize our energy infrastructure, but current photoelectrochemical techniques in CO 2 reduction are limited by sluggish chemical processes and high energy requirements. A project led by Peidong Yang, a senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division, offers an alternative approach: A new system design that is far less energy-demanding than conventional systems. This new design enabled 24/7 operation over multiple days – and effectively eliminated sunlight intermittency issues – by using silicon nanowire components that can be illuminated by renewably powered and superefficient LEDs.

2. Modeled artificial photosynthesis at multiple scales

Photoelectrochemical systems have the potential to produce hydrogen fuel and other liquid fuels through artificial photosynthesis, but manufacturing these fuels at scale will require improved efficiencies and product purity. In recent projects led by Adam Weber, senior scientist and head of the Energy Conversion Group in Berkeley Lab’s Energy Technologies Area, and Alexis Bell, faculty senior scientist in the Chemical Sciences Division, researchers developed and ran models to simulate how molecules, atoms, and electrons move around inside and at the interface of a photoelectrochemical device. These simulations shed light on the importance of ion transport – the movement of charged particles – in membrane materials and catalyst performance. The work also advanced new approaches to designing photoelectrochemical assemblies , including metal-insulator-semiconductor architectures, for CO 2 reduction.

Tobias Kistler, Chemical Sciences Division principal research associate, assembling a solar fuels device at Berkeley Lab’s Liquid Sunlight Alliance (LiSA) research facility.

3. Clarified the fundamentals of corrosion: How are ions born?

A project led by Shannon Boettcher, a senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Energy Storage & Distributed Resources Division, and Martin Head-Gordon, a senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Chemical Sciences Division, has created a validated molecular model which accurately delineates the rates at which ions – chemical species that carry electrical current in solutions – are created when a material rusts and dissolves. The advance will help researchers understand the fundamentals of corrosion in photoelectrochemical devices, a longstanding challenge to the commercialization of artificial photosynthesis. The model also maps out the rates at which ions are consumed at the interface between a solid and a liquid, such as when metals are plated from a solution to fabricate semiconductor chips.

By combining laboratory experiments with leading-edge computation, the team’s collaborative study revealed the sequence of molecular events and the resulting barriers that control how fast ions can be formed or consumed. The researchers are currently expanding the approach to complex systems: The aim is to create a general theory that is of broad importance to electrochemical technology in renewable liquid fuel synthesis, batteries, and controlling corrosion processes.

The experimental work was completed at the University of Oregon, a partnering LiSA institution where Boettcher was a chemistry and biochemistry professor before joining Berkeley Lab.

4. Developed superfast X-ray techniques to observe a cutting-edge catalyst at work in real time

Copper is one of the best catalysts in artificial photosynthesis for converting CO 2 into liquid fuels like ethanol, ethylene, and propanol. Researchers have wanted to improve the efficiency and product yield of these reactions, but observing them under operando or real-world working conditions at the interface between metal and electrolyte has been a challenge. A project led by Junko Yano, a senior scientist and Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging Division Director at Berkeley Lab, could enable the operando characterization of chemical reactions that take place where metal and electrolyte meet. Using X-ray beamlines at SLAC’s Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource and Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source , the team is developing and applying techniques to determine where chemical reactions take place in active sites of a copper-liquid interface at relevant time scales . The work can enable new insight related to the catalytic mechanism and durability issues in artificial photosynthesis systems.

Two images of a researcher in lab coats and safety goggles working with complex scientific equipment. In the first image, a researcher adjusts controls on a panel while others observe. In the second image, the same researcher interacts with a large, metallic vacuum chamber, closely examining the device.

5. Discovered new materials for solar-driven CO 2 conversion to fuels and chemicals

Photoelectrochemical devices for solar fuels applications rely on the reactions occurring on semiconductor surfaces under illumination. However, many otherwise promising semiconductors are not conducive for the desired CO 2 reduction chemistry due to underperformance in chemical stability and selectivity. Recent work by Joel Ager and his research team discovered two ways to overcome these challenges. First, they showed that an appropriately chosen metal oxide film can both protect the semiconductor from corrosion while allowing electrons to flow to a catalyst, allowing for solar-driven synthesis of ethylene from CO 2 .

Next, his team showed that Cu(InGa)S 2 or CIGS – a material used in the photovoltaic industry, but previously overlooked for solar fuels – can convert CO 2 to chemicals like carbon monoxide and formic acid all by itself, without any need for protective coatings or co-catalysts. This work was in collaboration with teams from imec Belgium and the Advanced Light Source at Berkeley Lab. These breakthroughs point to the vast potential of solar-driven CO 2 conversion and open new research avenues for exploration.

This work was supported by the DOE Office of Science.

Finn Babbe, Chemical Sciences Division staff scientist and Laser Lab lead at Berkeley Lab’s Liquid Sunlight Alliance (LiSA) research facility.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to delivering solutions for humankind through research in clean energy, a healthy planet, and discovery science. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 16 Nobel Prizes. Researchers from around the world rely on the Lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science .

Texas A&M Teams Up To Advance Robotic Dexterity

a rendering of a robot and human hand about to touch

Texas A&M University is joining a new National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center (ERC), led by Northwestern University, seeking to develop robots capable of enhancing human labor.

A central goal of the Human AugmentatioN via Dexterity (HAND) center is to make robotic assistance accessible and applicable to a wide range of physical actions through an engineered system of dexterous robotic hands, AI-powered fine motor skills, human interface, as well as developing the workforce and training for the future.

The five-year, $26 million grant also includes Carnegie-Mellon University and Florida A&M University, with faculty support from Syracuse University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The center’s NSF grant has the potential to be renewed for another $26 million for an additional five years. Founded in 1985, the NSF ERC program supports U.S. universities conducting convergent research, education and technology translation aimed at creating substantial societal impacts.

“We are excited to be a part of this groundbreaking initiative that will redefine the future of work and push the boundaries of technology to make a tangible impact,” said Dr. Robert H. Bishop, vice chancellor and dean for Texas A&M Engineering. “At Texas A&M, we believe in harnessing innovation to solve pressing problems and improve lives.”

Dr. Cynthia Hipwell, Oscar S. Wyatt, Jr. ’45 Chair II Professor in the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, will serve as a deputy director for the HAND center.

Hipwell said that current robotic tools typically require specialized expertise and an expensive integration process and thus are limited to high-volume, highly repeatable operations. The center’s approach in creating robotics that adaptably perform many different tasks and are easy for workers to use could provide affordable support to address labor shortages in manufacturing and caregiving, as well as food processing, handling precious or dangerous materials and more.

An early prototype of robotic hands soldering.

“Our vision is that it will be like the transition from mainframe computers used by specialized programmers to the arrival of the Apple Macintosh or PC [personal computer] as a tool that everybody could use,” said Hipwell. “We have many small and medium enterprises around our country that haven’t been able to benefit from automation technology. We want to create something that workers can use as a tool to complete their work. That’s really our vision — democratizing access to robotics.”

To achieve the goal of providing a practical and easily accessible tool, researchers have divided their work into three main areas:

Hands: sensing, actuation, and design
Intelligent dexterity: simulation, representation, and control
Human interface: multimodal interface, no-code programming, and social/legal/industrial studies

The center will also develop workforce training materials and an intuitive training interface enabling human operators of all education levels to teach the robots how to perform their necessary tasks.

“The idea is that these tools could be something that any of us could use,” said Hipwell. “This could be something that could help a worker with physical work, or it could help someone stay in their home longer because they have physical assistance with some of their tasks. It could even be brought into areas where the work is dangerous and offer a way to help someone do physical work less dangerously.”

The HAND center brings together experts in various fields, including materials, manufacturing, manipulation, soft robotics, artificial intelligence, machine perception, modeling, haptics, human-robot interaction, participatory design and research, team science, education, law and the social sciences.

“To make a breakthrough in this area, you can’t just move one aspect of it forward — just actuators or just control algorithms or just interface mechanisms. I think making a breakthrough requires this coordinated system approach,” said Hipwell. “We have the opportunity with this system-focused effort to make a much larger impact than we would as individual researchers working alone.”

In addition to Hipwell, several Texas A&M researchers will contribute to the center’s focus areas. Dr. Debra Fowler , executive director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, will lead overall workforce development programs for the center, leading the creation of programs of study for future leaders in the field and programs for technicians, workers, and K-12 and community college outreach. Dr. Robert Ambrose will lead the High Consequence Materials Handling Testbed, which will help the center partner with collaborators such as NASA and Los Alamos National Laboratory on specific applications of HAND technology. Drs. Rebecca Friesen and Taylor Ware will contribute to the human interface and hands research areas, and Dr. Mohamed Gharib will lead unique K-12 and community college outreach programs.

Media contact: Alyson Chapman, [email protected]

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Key things to know about U.S. election polling in 2024

Conceptual image of an oversized voting ballot box in a large crowd of people with shallow depth of field

Confidence in U.S. public opinion polling was shaken by errors in 2016 and 2020. In both years’ general elections, many polls underestimated the strength of Republican candidates, including Donald Trump. These errors laid bare some real limitations of polling.

In the midterms that followed those elections, polling performed better . But many Americans remain skeptical that it can paint an accurate portrait of the public’s political preferences.

Restoring people’s confidence in polling is an important goal, because robust and independent public polling has a critical role to play in a democratic society. It gathers and publishes information about the well-being of the public and about citizens’ views on major issues. And it provides an important counterweight to people in power, or those seeking power, when they make claims about “what the people want.”

The challenges facing polling are undeniable. In addition to the longstanding issues of rising nonresponse and cost, summer 2024 brought extraordinary events that transformed the presidential race . The good news is that people with deep knowledge of polling are working hard to fix the problems exposed in 2016 and 2020, experimenting with more data sources and interview approaches than ever before. Still, polls are more useful to the public if people have realistic expectations about what surveys can do well – and what they cannot.

With that in mind, here are some key points to know about polling heading into this year’s presidential election.

Probability sampling (or “random sampling”). This refers to a polling method in which survey participants are recruited using random sampling from a database or list that includes nearly everyone in the population. The pollster selects the sample. The survey is not open for anyone who wants to sign up.

Online opt-in polling (or “nonprobability sampling”). These polls are recruited using a variety of methods that are sometimes referred to as “convenience sampling.” Respondents come from a variety of online sources such as ads on social media or search engines, websites offering rewards in exchange for survey participation, or self-enrollment. Unlike surveys with probability samples, people can volunteer to participate in opt-in surveys.

Nonresponse and nonresponse bias. Nonresponse is when someone sampled for a survey does not participate. Nonresponse bias occurs when the pattern of nonresponse leads to error in a poll estimate. For example, college graduates are more likely than those without a degree to participate in surveys, leading to the potential that the share of college graduates in the resulting sample will be too high.

Mode of interview. This refers to the format in which respondents are presented with and respond to survey questions. The most common modes are online, live telephone, text message and paper. Some polls use more than one mode.

Weighting. This is a statistical procedure pollsters perform to make their survey align with the broader population on key characteristics like age, race, etc. For example, if a survey has too many college graduates compared with their share in the population, people without a college degree are “weighted up” to match the proper share.

How are election polls being conducted?

Pollsters are making changes in response to the problems in previous elections. As a result, polling is different today than in 2016. Most U.S. polling organizations that conducted and publicly released national surveys in both 2016 and 2022 (61%) used methods in 2022 that differed from what they used in 2016 . And change has continued since 2022.

A sand chart showing that, as the number of public pollsters in the U.S. has grown, survey methods have become more diverse.

One change is that the number of active polling organizations has grown significantly, indicating that there are fewer barriers to entry into the polling field. The number of organizations that conduct national election polls more than doubled between 2000 and 2022.

This growth has been driven largely by pollsters using inexpensive opt-in sampling methods. But previous Pew Research Center analyses have demonstrated how surveys that use nonprobability sampling may have errors twice as large , on average, as those that use probability sampling.

The second change is that many of the more prominent polling organizations that use probability sampling – including Pew Research Center – have shifted from conducting polls primarily by telephone to using online methods, or some combination of online, mail and telephone. The result is that polling methodologies are far more diverse now than in the past.

(For more about how public opinion polling works, including a chapter on election polls, read our short online course on public opinion polling basics .)

All good polling relies on statistical adjustment called “weighting,” which makes sure that the survey sample aligns with the broader population on key characteristics. Historically, public opinion researchers have adjusted their data using a core set of demographic variables to correct imbalances between the survey sample and the population.

But there is a growing realization among survey researchers that weighting a poll on just a few variables like age, race and gender is insufficient for getting accurate results. Some groups of people – such as older adults and college graduates – are more likely to take surveys, which can lead to errors that are too sizable for a simple three- or four-variable adjustment to work well. Adjusting on more variables produces more accurate results, according to Center studies in 2016 and 2018 .

A number of pollsters have taken this lesson to heart. For example, recent high-quality polls by Gallup and The New York Times/Siena College adjusted on eight and 12 variables, respectively. Our own polls typically adjust on 12 variables . In a perfect world, it wouldn’t be necessary to have that much intervention by the pollster. But the real world of survey research is not perfect.

Predicting who will vote is critical – and difficult. Preelection polls face one crucial challenge that routine opinion polls do not: determining who of the people surveyed will actually cast a ballot.

Roughly a third of eligible Americans do not vote in presidential elections , despite the enormous attention paid to these contests. Determining who will abstain is difficult because people can’t perfectly predict their future behavior – and because many people feel social pressure to say they’ll vote even if it’s unlikely.

No one knows the profile of voters ahead of Election Day. We can’t know for sure whether young people will turn out in greater numbers than usual, or whether key racial or ethnic groups will do so. This means pollsters are left to make educated guesses about turnout, often using a mix of historical data and current measures of voting enthusiasm. This is very different from routine opinion polls, which mostly do not ask about people’s future intentions.

When major news breaks, a poll’s timing can matter. Public opinion on most issues is remarkably stable, so you don’t necessarily need a recent poll about an issue to get a sense of what people think about it. But dramatic events can and do change public opinion , especially when people are first learning about a new topic. For example, polls this summer saw notable changes in voter attitudes following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. Polls taken immediately after a major event may pick up a shift in public opinion, but those shifts are sometimes short-lived. Polls fielded weeks or months later are what allow us to see whether an event has had a long-term impact on the public’s psyche.

How accurate are polls?

The answer to this question depends on what you want polls to do. Polls are used for all kinds of purposes in addition to showing who’s ahead and who’s behind in a campaign. Fair or not, however, the accuracy of election polling is usually judged by how closely the polls matched the outcome of the election.

A diverging bar chart showing polling errors in U.S. presidential elections.

By this standard, polling in 2016 and 2020 performed poorly. In both years, state polling was characterized by serious errors. National polling did reasonably well in 2016 but faltered in 2020.

In 2020, a post-election review of polling by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) found that “the 2020 polls featured polling error of an unusual magnitude: It was the highest in 40 years for the national popular vote and the highest in at least 20 years for state-level estimates of the vote in presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial contests.”

How big were the errors? Polls conducted in the last two weeks before the election suggested that Biden’s margin over Trump was nearly twice as large as it ended up being in the final national vote tally.

Errors of this size make it difficult to be confident about who is leading if the election is closely contested, as many U.S. elections are .

Pollsters are rightly working to improve the accuracy of their polls. But even an error of 4 or 5 percentage points isn’t too concerning if the purpose of the poll is to describe whether the public has favorable or unfavorable opinions about candidates , or to show which issues matter to which voters. And on questions that gauge where people stand on issues, we usually want to know broadly where the public stands. We don’t necessarily need to know the precise share of Americans who say, for example, that climate change is mostly caused by human activity. Even judged by its performance in recent elections, polling can still provide a faithful picture of public sentiment on the important issues of the day.

The 2022 midterms saw generally accurate polling, despite a wave of partisan polls predicting a broad Republican victory. In fact, FiveThirtyEight found that “polls were more accurate in 2022 than in any cycle since at least 1998, with almost no bias toward either party.” Moreover, a handful of contrarian polls that predicted a 2022 “red wave” largely washed out when the votes were tallied. In sum, if we focus on polling in the most recent national election, there’s plenty of reason to be encouraged.

Compared with other elections in the past 20 years, polls have been less accurate when Donald Trump is on the ballot. Preelection surveys suffered from large errors – especially at the state level – in 2016 and 2020, when Trump was standing for election. But they performed reasonably well in the 2018 and 2022 midterms, when he was not.

During the 2016 campaign, observers speculated about the possibility that Trump supporters might be less willing to express their support to a pollster – a phenomenon sometimes described as the “shy Trump effect.” But a committee of polling experts evaluated five different tests of the “shy Trump” theory and turned up little to no evidence for each one . Later, Pew Research Center and, in a separate test, a researcher from Yale also found little to no evidence in support of the claim.

Instead, two other explanations are more likely. One is about the difficulty of estimating who will turn out to vote. Research has found that Trump is popular among people who tend to sit out midterms but turn out for him in presidential election years. Since pollsters often use past turnout to predict who will vote, it can be difficult to anticipate when irregular voters will actually show up.

The other explanation is that Republicans in the Trump era have become a little less likely than Democrats to participate in polls . Pollsters call this “partisan nonresponse bias.” Surprisingly, polls historically have not shown any particular pattern of favoring one side or the other. The errors that favored Democratic candidates in the past eight years may be a result of the growth of political polarization, along with declining trust among conservatives in news organizations and other institutions that conduct polls.

Whatever the cause, the fact that Trump is again the nominee of the Republican Party means that pollsters must be especially careful to make sure all segments of the population are properly represented in surveys.

The real margin of error is often about double the one reported. A typical election poll sample of about 1,000 people has a margin of sampling error that’s about plus or minus 3 percentage points. That number expresses the uncertainty that results from taking a sample of the population rather than interviewing everyone . Random samples are likely to differ a little from the population just by chance, in the same way that the quality of your hand in a card game varies from one deal to the next.

A table showing that sampling error is not the only kind of polling error.

The problem is that sampling error is not the only kind of error that affects a poll. Those other kinds of error, in fact, can be as large or larger than sampling error. Consequently, the reported margin of error can lead people to think that polls are more accurate than they really are.

There are three other, equally important sources of error in polling: noncoverage error , where not all the target population has a chance of being sampled; nonresponse error, where certain groups of people may be less likely to participate; and measurement error, where people may not properly understand the questions or misreport their opinions. Not only does the margin of error fail to account for those other sources of potential error, putting a number only on sampling error implies to the public that other kinds of error do not exist.

Several recent studies show that the average total error in a poll estimate may be closer to twice as large as that implied by a typical margin of sampling error. This hidden error underscores the fact that polls may not be precise enough to call the winner in a close election.

Other important things to remember

Transparency in how a poll was conducted is associated with better accuracy . The polling industry has several platforms and initiatives aimed at promoting transparency in survey methodology. These include AAPOR’s transparency initiative and the Roper Center archive . Polling organizations that participate in these organizations have less error, on average, than those that don’t participate, an analysis by FiveThirtyEight found .

Participation in these transparency efforts does not guarantee that a poll is rigorous, but it is undoubtedly a positive signal. Transparency in polling means disclosing essential information, including the poll’s sponsor, the data collection firm, where and how participants were selected, modes of interview, field dates, sample size, question wording, and weighting procedures.

There is evidence that when the public is told that a candidate is extremely likely to win, some people may be less likely to vote . Following the 2016 election, many people wondered whether the pervasive forecasts that seemed to all but guarantee a Hillary Clinton victory – two modelers put her chances at 99% – led some would-be voters to conclude that the race was effectively over and that their vote would not make a difference. There is scientific research to back up that claim: A team of researchers found experimental evidence that when people have high confidence that one candidate will win, they are less likely to vote. This helps explain why some polling analysts say elections should be covered using traditional polling estimates and margins of error rather than speculative win probabilities (also known as “probabilistic forecasts”).

National polls tell us what the entire public thinks about the presidential candidates, but the outcome of the election is determined state by state in the Electoral College . The 2000 and 2016 presidential elections demonstrated a difficult truth: The candidate with the largest share of support among all voters in the United States sometimes loses the election. In those two elections, the national popular vote winners (Al Gore and Hillary Clinton) lost the election in the Electoral College (to George W. Bush and Donald Trump). In recent years, analysts have shown that Republican candidates do somewhat better in the Electoral College than in the popular vote because every state gets three electoral votes regardless of population – and many less-populated states are rural and more Republican.

For some, this raises the question: What is the use of national polls if they don’t tell us who is likely to win the presidency? In fact, national polls try to gauge the opinions of all Americans, regardless of whether they live in a battleground state like Pennsylvania, a reliably red state like Idaho or a reliably blue state like Rhode Island. In short, national polls tell us what the entire citizenry is thinking. Polls that focus only on the competitive states run the risk of giving too little attention to the needs and views of the vast majority of Americans who live in uncompetitive states – about 80%.

Fortunately, this is not how most pollsters view the world . As the noted political scientist Sidney Verba explained, “Surveys produce just what democracy is supposed to produce – equal representation of all citizens.”

Survey Methods
Trust, Facts & Democracy
Voter Files

Scott Keeter is a senior survey advisor at Pew Research Center .

Courtney Kennedy is Vice President of Methods and Innovation at Pew Research Center .

How do people in the U.S. take Pew Research Center surveys, anyway?

How public polling has changed in the 21st century, what 2020’s election poll errors tell us about the accuracy of issue polling, a field guide to polling: election 2020 edition, methods 101: how is polling done around the world, most popular.

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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions.
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