8 ms·

Pretty much this. Universities would greatly benefit from having more staff scientists with deep xp, more core labs, more personnel such as these glass blowers,

Pretty much this. Universities would greatly benefit from having more staff scientists with deep xp, more core labs, more personnel such as these glass blowers, and dedicated IT and development teams made available to researchers. They never make it happen because most people at a given institution don't really care about furthering the institution as a whole, and are instead focused exclusively on their own lab or personal career.

rhombocombus 8y ago
If that were a priority of universities I would likely be working at one instead of working in tech. There just wasn't room for someone who wasn't interested in pursuing tenure-track positions when I finished school, and that was not something I was willing to pursue for a number of reasons, chief among them being my desire to stay in one place.
chrisseaton 8y ago
What is 'deep xp', and what do you mean by 'core labs'?
- acomjean 8y ago
  xp = experience. cores are a university thing. They are like mini specialized businesses inside the university shared across the university. for example if you are in a lab and need a single cell sequencing but the equipment is too expensive or you lack the expertise, if your university(or another university) has a "single cell sequencing core" with equipment you can use it for a small fee. example of a core search: https://search.eagle-i.net/central/#results?q=rnai&t=http://vivoweb.org/ontology/core%23CoreLaboratory&of=score https://search.eagle-i.net/central/#results?q=rnai&t=http://...
  - sandworm101 8y ago
    Aside from the formal lab concepts, universities once were a place where a vast range of experts are on hand to help each other. If the physicist needed a marine biologist [1] or a medical doctor a statistician, they could find each other. That included trades people like glass blowers and machinists (engineers). But the narrowing of fields and the stovepiping of budgets means these links are becoming more difficult to maintain. [1] I know of one astronomer who's work was threatened by rare/protected birds nesting near his equipment. Sometimes it is good to work in an organization with in-house ornithologists. 'That's not dark matter. It's bats flying by your telescope every night."
    - Fomite 8y ago
      I'm an epidemiologist, and on my campus today I interacted with a statistician, a cell biologist, a veterinarian, two computer scientists, and send a Python programming question to our HPC group.
      - sandworm101 8y ago
        While I was at UBC, one day the theatre department called the animal research people. They wanted to borrow a lamb for a play. They submitted the appropriate live animal "experimentation". Someone on the committee did say something about not using animals for "entertainment purposes" but in the end they got the animal in exchange for tickets
- Thriptic 8y ago
  Most labs lack the experience or equipment to efficiently do all aspects of their work, so departments will create "core facilities" which house specialized equipment and personnel with relevant experience to facilitate specific aspects of research. Examples from biology could be imaging work, cultivating cells, working with animals, working with DNA etc. A machine shop, these glass blowers, or a computational cluster would be examples from other departments. These facilities are made available to researchers for a fee (think cost center). The reason these aren't more prevelant is that the universities typically don't pay for them directly; they are frequently funded by a department and stocked with equipment purchased by individual labs. In exchange for donating equipment, the labs get priority access and have supplies and equipment maintenance costs paid for by the department. IN THEORY cores and other communal resources should be paid for by university overhead (basically a fee assessed on each grant or funding source brought in). In practice, overhead goes to pay for a bunch of bullshit that has nothing to do with research.
  - Something1234 8y ago
    What kind of bullshit does the overhead fund? Is it more than just administration and facilities?
    - Fomite 8y ago
      Overhead keeps the lights on. It funds things like facilities, administrative support, and then is actually used for things like core facilities or shared equipment expenditures (this is often at the department or college level). It's also often where the source for new faculty startup packages and the like comes from.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - Fomite 8y ago
    Part of the issue is that both overhead and state allocations are unreliable. Few universities can bank on things like "We'll get $10 million a year to keep the cluster updated" and the lesson learned from the many soft money institutes that spawned during the Clinton years is that overhead-dependent services are a recipe for boom and bust, and the loss of exactly that kind of experience you're talking about.

rhombocombus 8y ago

If that were a priority of universities I would likely be working at one instead of working in tech. There just wasn't room for someone who wasn't interested in pursuing tenure-track positions when I finished school, and that was not something I was willing to pursue for a number of reasons, chief among them being my desire to stay in one place.

chrisseaton 8y ago

What is 'deep xp', and what do you mean by 'core labs'?

acomjean 8y ago
xp = experience. cores are a university thing. They are like mini specialized businesses inside the university shared across the university. for example if you are in a lab and need a single cell sequencing but the equipment is too expensive or you lack the expertise, if your university(or another university) has a "single cell sequencing core" with equipment you can use it for a small fee. example of a core search: https://search.eagle-i.net/central/#results?q=rnai&t=http://vivoweb.org/ontology/core%23CoreLaboratory&of=score https://search.eagle-i.net/central/#results?q=rnai&t=http://...
- sandworm101 8y ago
  Aside from the formal lab concepts, universities once were a place where a vast range of experts are on hand to help each other. If the physicist needed a marine biologist [1] or a medical doctor a statistician, they could find each other. That included trades people like glass blowers and machinists (engineers). But the narrowing of fields and the stovepiping of budgets means these links are becoming more difficult to maintain. [1] I know of one astronomer who's work was threatened by rare/protected birds nesting near his equipment. Sometimes it is good to work in an organization with in-house ornithologists. 'That's not dark matter. It's bats flying by your telescope every night."
  - Fomite 8y ago
    I'm an epidemiologist, and on my campus today I interacted with a statistician, a cell biologist, a veterinarian, two computer scientists, and send a Python programming question to our HPC group.
    - sandworm101 8y ago
      While I was at UBC, one day the theatre department called the animal research people. They wanted to borrow a lamb for a play. They submitted the appropriate live animal "experimentation". Someone on the committee did say something about not using animals for "entertainment purposes" but in the end they got the animal in exchange for tickets
Thriptic 8y ago
Most labs lack the experience or equipment to efficiently do all aspects of their work, so departments will create "core facilities" which house specialized equipment and personnel with relevant experience to facilitate specific aspects of research. Examples from biology could be imaging work, cultivating cells, working with animals, working with DNA etc. A machine shop, these glass blowers, or a computational cluster would be examples from other departments. These facilities are made available to researchers for a fee (think cost center). The reason these aren't more prevelant is that the universities typically don't pay for them directly; they are frequently funded by a department and stocked with equipment purchased by individual labs. In exchange for donating equipment, the labs get priority access and have supplies and equipment maintenance costs paid for by the department. IN THEORY cores and other communal resources should be paid for by university overhead (basically a fee assessed on each grant or funding source brought in). In practice, overhead goes to pay for a bunch of bullshit that has nothing to do with research.
- Something1234 8y ago
  What kind of bullshit does the overhead fund? Is it more than just administration and facilities?
  - Fomite 8y ago
    Overhead keeps the lights on. It funds things like facilities, administrative support, and then is actually used for things like core facilities or shared equipment expenditures (this is often at the department or college level). It's also often where the source for new faculty startup packages and the like comes from.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- Fomite 8y ago
  Part of the issue is that both overhead and state allocations are unreliable. Few universities can bank on things like "We'll get $10 million a year to keep the cluster updated" and the lesson learned from the many soft money institutes that spawned during the Clinton years is that overhead-dependent services are a recipe for boom and bust, and the loss of exactly that kind of experience you're talking about.