The era of core facilities has arrived

Dear colleagues,

The Life Science Building will be completed in 2026. The new building heralds a new era at UiO.

From our point of view at the Faculty of Medicine (MED), one of the major changes will be the strengthening of a number of technology platforms. Several of these will function as core facilities already upon start-up, while others will follow some time after this.

Core facilities involve sharing resources and expertise

By core facilities for research, we mean entities that offer services by providing access to state-of-the-art and costly ¡°heavy¡± scientific equipment and complex methods and processes. These facilities bring together resources and expertise that would otherwise not make practical or financial sense to duplicate. UiO currently has 30 core facilities approved for the period 2023-2026 (in Norwegian).

They provide our research groups with opportunities to conduct cutting-edge research using advanced technology and specialised knowledge, and they will undoubtedly contribute to the University attracting talented researchers and students both domestically and from abroad.

The collaboration utilises interdisciplinary expertise

Preparations have been on-going for several years, and the planning of equipment purchases, which started in spring 2023, is now progressing well. A total of at least 20 technology platforms will be established in the Life Science Building. Half of these are directly relevant to us at MED. These cover areas such as antimicrobial resistance, structural biology, proteomics, metabolomics, chemical biology, electron microscopy, optical microscopy/advanced light microscopy, single cell technologies, zebrafish, flow cytometry, and high-throughput gene sequencing.

Participants from Klinmed, IMB and NCMM have joined together in a broad collaboration to establish the new technology platforms. In many instances, our academic groups work closely together with the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and with Oslo University Hospital. The collaboration enables us to fully utilise the interdisciplinary expertise to achieve cutting-edge research results. More information will be available as the planning work progresses.

Kind regards Jan