Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

The UBC Bioimaging Facility (BIF) is the most comprehensive bioimaging facility in Western Canada and unique to BC and offers a combination of three things that no other North American facility does: (1) a complete management structure including an advisory committee, an academic director, a research manager and highly trained technical staff, (2) a comprehensive light microscopy unit with tissue culture, confocal and multi-photon imaging and image processing and analysis, and (3) a biological electron microscopy unit including a partnership with Leica Microsystems. BIF is administered by the Department of Botany and its personnel comprise an Academic Director (Tier 1 CRC Geoffrey Wasteneys), a Research Manager (Garnet Martens), and three technicians (EM specialists Derrick Horne and Bradford Ross and light microscopy specialist Kevin Hodgson). Researchers from 25 UBC departments, Simon Fraser University, Thompson Rivers University, local hospitals and industry utilize the BIF. Since 2007, over 500 HQP have been trained, including 145 PDFs, 234 PhDs, 76 MScs, technical staff as well as Honours undergraduates. Researchers using BIF have brought in over $41 million in grant funding to UBC in the past 3 years. The top 15 research groups of the facility have produced over 600 publications in the past five years, which were cited over 8000 times. Other research outputs include 6 patents and 18 industry collaborations. The annual operating cost of the BIF is $480,000 and with incoming funds of $330,00 BIF is faced with a $150,000 deficit. Support for the BIF highlights the importance of the facility to the research community. Up until July 2013 the existing infrastructure and technical staff of the BIF were supported by a CFI IOF grant and supplemented by cost recovery generated through user fees. UBC provides salary support through the Departments of Botany and Zoology for the Research Manager and has recently provided $120,000 for technician salary support. UBC has also provided funds to perform emergency repairs on key infrastructure (e.g. $10,000 in September 2013 to repair a TEM and recently $10,000 to repair a high pressure freezer). The institution has provided significant funds ($1,200,000) to construct space to house the existing infrastructure. We propose to use the NSERC OMSRF funds to purchase service contracts for UBC BIF hosted FEI Tecnai transmission electron microscope ($42,876) and the Olympus FV1000 confocal/multiphoton light microscope ($9,600) in order to have prioritized service and maintenance visits to ensure that these instruments are maintained in a ready-to-use condition. In addition to these service contracts, we propose that NSERC OSMRE supports salaries of two technicians, $54,180 for Bradford Ross and $43,344 for Kevin Hodgson, initially hired to support the FEI TEM and Olympus FV1000.