Team: Sarah Bennett (Lead), Chris de Wolf, Steven Servin, Richard Napier and John McCarthy, School of Life Sciences

Summary: Shared Resource Laboratories (SRL) provide technical and scientific resources with highly trained staff, management, financial oversight and rigorous quality standards.However, these facilities often only include highly specialised technologies (such as those in the current UoW RTPs).Many other scientific instruments are purchased on research grants and remain under the management of a research group.These instruments often rely on the technical expertise of PhDs and post-docs within the research group to operate them, but these skills are lost as researchers move on to other posts and the equipment often becomes neglected.

The aim of our project was to remove the barriers that inhibit equipment sharing.These include the time required to train other users and maintain a more frequently used instrument and the financial responsibility to fix any breakages.By placing scientific instruments in an SRL, we can provide dedicated technical support and a financial responsibility for repairs.Sharing equipment in this way will promote open research practices.For example, a technical specialist who provides standardised training on instrument use and data analysis will ensure data integrity.

We reached out to academics in the School of Life Sciences to identify analytical instruments currently hosted in research groups that could have a wider benefit to the scientific community and bring these instruments into a SRL environment. In return, the SRL offered to provide training and application support, management, financial oversight and quality standards to a wider, non-restricted, scientific community.Engagement was low and therefore we examined the asset list and identified academics to approach directly.In the end, we brought 4 instruments into the SRL.They were all serviced and the technical specialists received training to operate them.Unfortunately, one of the instruments then received a H&S audit and was condemned for laser safety.Whilst this is unfortunate for the project, it does demonstrate that an additional benefit of the SRL model is to provide rigorous controls on safety.Had this instrument not been in the SRL, it would have been missed during the audit, putting inexperienced users at risk of eye injury.Fortunately, the University has supported the replacement of this instrument as part of a last minute academic equipment fund bid.In April, we issue a call for pilot projects, which was more positively received, and resulted in new users to the SRLs.With some of the funds, we also initiated a Research Technical Professional (RTProf) forum at Gibbet Hill, to encourage networking amongst the technical specialists.This has been highly successful, with engagement of ~30 RTProfs over 3 lunch gatherings.

The project was successful in laying the ground work and reputation of the SRLs at Warwick.These can be considered on a similar level to the Research Technology Platforms (RTPs) but with less specialised technologies.Whilst engagement to donate old instruments to the SRL was low, we expect to attract future grant funded equipment, with the SRL model strengthening any business case.Therefore it is essential that the University continues to support running costs and technical specialists within these facilities and increasing the support with demand.The role of the technical specialist is become increasingly recognised and therefore it is important that they feel part of a community and respected for their role.We have laid the initial foundations for a RTProf community at Warwick and if successful with our most recent bid, will continue to develop this across campus.