Services
The CMCI Microscope Specialist will advise you on the most suitable microscope to use for your research project, free of charge.
Each user will be trained according to their prior experience and microscope needs. To arrange a training session, contact us at centre-for-microscopy@concordia.ca, providing the following information:
- What is your sample? (e.g. C. Elegans, cultured mammalian cells, crystal deposits)
- How is it mounted? (e.g. deposited or grown on a coverslip, suspended in media)
- If it's fluorescent, what fluorescent proteins are being expressed?
- What information or statistics do you want to derive from your images?
The facility offers free of charge access to the CMCI server in order to store data for a project.
The storage server allow user to export their images from acquisition station and share information with their teams. Its main purpose is to give you a place where you can save your microscopy images after your session while reducing the risk of malware from portable drives and USB key. It also ensures the good functioning of the microscope. You can save directly to the server or, if speed is an issue, on the local hard-drive and then move the images.
- It is forbidden to connect any USB-device to the instrument computers.
- The server is NOT meant for long term storage and archival and therefore it is the team and ultimately the PI responsibility to clean their volume on a regular basis, and to back it up. It is recommended that files related to published projects and old students be transferred to an external hard-drive and removed from the server. No data should stay more than a couple of days on any computer that controls a microscope (acquisition computers). All data must be stored on the server. Any files left on the microscope computers for more than one week can be deleted without notice.
- The CMCI does not guarantee the safety or integrity of any data on the server. It is the responsibility of each user to make additional copies of the data and keep it in a safe place.
- The CMCI does not make back-up of any form of the data saved on the server.
- To ensure a just share of the CMCI storage space, accounts will be set up the following way:
- Each laboratory will be issued a 1TB-5TB volume available for all their members. If that space is too limiting, a PI can request additional space by emailing centre-for-microscopy@concordia.ca and providing a valid justification.
- This space is accessible to the lab and the CMCI administrator only.
- The server is meant to be used for scientific purpose only; personal files are forbidden.
For a fee, the Microscope Specialist can perform additional tasks including image acquisition and sample preparation. Additionally, the Microscope Specialist can write bespoke code to perform image analysis, assuming suitable data has been acquired; this should be discussed between the PI, researcher and Microscope Specialist prior to the acquisition of data.