N.C. State and UNC- Chapel Hill reached a deal earlier this month to help researchers at both universities use equipment that would otherwise be unavailable to them.
The agreement enables researchers who work at N.C. State and UNC-Chapel Hill to share specialized research facilities on both campuses, according to Jonathan Horowitz, assistant vice chancellor for research development at N.C. State.
“We call them shared facilities, and you can think of them as service centers that are packed with expensive equipment that no single laboratory could purchase,” Horowitz said. “In doing so they are paying for a facility that people inside and outside the university can use.”
Horowitz said typical customers for these shared facilities—even those that work at the university where the lab is located—have to pay extra in order to use the equipment.
“As a consequence, if someone at N.C. State wanted to use equipment at Chapel Hill it might be cost prohibitive,” Horowitz said.
Horowitz said the deal allows researchers from both universities to use the equipment regardless of their affiliation to the University at a lesser cost.
“The benefit is that whether you’re a student, staff member or a faculty member you can use the equipment at less cost, therefore you can conduct more experiments with the amount of money,” Horowitz said.
Horowitz said that before the deal was signed, there was a significant amount of collaboration between researchers at both universities, and the deal will serve to increase the collaboration between N.C. State and UNC- Chapel Hill.
“This agreement should increase the number of collaborations because there is more opportunity for NCSU people to interact with Chapel-Hill people, but they are different with the types of research conducted,” Horowitz said.
For example, Horowitz said with the shared facilities, UNC-Chapel Hill’s medical school and NCSU’s veterinary school will now be able to collaborate more easily.
Horowitz said that some of the equipment can cost several million dollars, and the rates to operate the equipment can vary drastically.
In addition, Horowitz said that due to the deal, many facilities that are costly for researchers from the other university to operate will become much cheaper.
“For example, at N.C. State we have a facility called the Analytical Instrumentation Facility which Chapel Hill does not have,” Horowitz said. “In contrast, Chapel Hill has high throughput screening instrumentation which allows them to do many biological assays with a robot, which we don’t have.”
Horowitz also said that the collaboration should not be limited to just N.C. State and UNC-Chapel Hill and that researchers should be able to utilize shared facilities at other universities in North Carolina, such as Duke University and Wake Forest University.
“I don’t see any reason why we can’t do that, it seems to me like a very logical thing to do. Moreover, since NCSU and Chapel Hill are part of a 16-school system, schools such as Pembroke and Wilmington also should have access to the equipment at the other universities,” Horowitz said.
