Hello to everyone,

We have a Confocal Facility within our University that was jointly setup by
various Research Institutes within our region including our own University.
We are under increasing pressure to enlarge our revenue to the point of
becoming fully user pays, therefore fully funding our Facility. At the
moment we do very well and have the ability so far to cover all aspects of
maintenance and computer and software upgrades and ongoing development in
equipment. The only expense we do not cover is the salary portion of the
support staff for the facility. This is paid for by the University.

I would very much appreciate some feedback from managers of other facilities
or even users on pricing structures for your facility ie. how much and for
what eg.scanning time, image analysis, training etc.
I would also be interested in amounts of usage ie. is your unit used 100% of
the time or more or less and how many staff support your facility. If there
are any Confocal facilities out there that fully fund themselves or not??

This information would be very useful to us to compare our setup to see if
we have got the equation right or not.

Any information would be much appreciated.


Thankyou in advance

Liz Nickless
Confocal Microscope Facility
Massey University
New Zealand