The newly launched Multi-User Equipment and Services Portal, opened last week by Unicamp's Dean of Research (PRP), was created with the aim of providing visibility, for the research community and the business sector, to the sophisticated equipment and specialized services available in Unicamp's units and laboratories. “The idea is that this equipment park that we have at the University is visible to users from the internal and external community”, explained the Vice-Rector of Research, Munir Skaf.
Among other goals, the Portal aims to optimize the use of available equipment, the cost of which is high to acquire and maintain. “Some of this great equipment exists in a few places and other researchers can benefit from them”, said Skaf.
The platform launched is a very simple search portal, which works with a database fed by the units. It was developed by Tatiane Franklin da Silva with the help of Sydnei Lucchesi Le Petit, both PRP employees. According to Skaf, information about each piece of equipment can be entered by the units through the portal itself. This information includes, among other items, the description of the equipment, the location where it is located and key words that enable its discovery by search engines. Depending on the case, the interested party will be able to contact the person responsible for the equipment or will be redirected to the page of the unit that manages it. “Several units already have shared laboratory structures and search tools on their own page. The new portal will centralize and give visibility to this information,” she reported. For units that do not yet have a formalized structure of multi-user equipment, PRP will provide guidance and provide a “kit” consisting of a customizable web platform (website) and a web scheduling service, which will be used for units to publicize and manage their equipment. and services.
According to Skaf, Unicamp has a long tradition in multi-user laboratories. One example is the Central Laboratory of High Performance Technologies in Life Sciences (LaCTAD), a Unicamp initiative supported by the Multi-User Equipment program of the São Paulo Research Foundation (Fapesp). In addition to LaCTAD, the following were mentioned by the dean: the Institute of Chemistry (IQ), which has maintained an institutional park of shared equipment for decades and since 1997 has established an Analytical Center, which provides services in the area of chemical analysis; the Gleb Wataghin Institute of Physics (IFGW), which has a multi-user laboratory called LaMult; in addition to the Institute of Biology (IB), the Faculty of Technology (FT), the Faculty of Chemical Engineering (FEQ) and the Center for Semiconductor Components (CCS). “To date, six Units have included a list of their equipment on the portal, totaling more than 140 medium and large instruments and services. PRP’s expectation is that this number will grow significantly in the coming months, as other Units join the portal”, noted Skaf.
The dean also highlighted that the creation of the portal is just one of the results achieved by the Working Group, created by ordinance PRP 08/2017, formed by professors Pascoal JG Pagliuso (Institute of Physics), Watson Loh (Institute of Chemistry) and Sandra Krauchenco (LaCTAD). In addition to proposing actions to provide visibility to Unicamp's multi-user laboratories and equipment, the group prepared a series of recommendations on how the use of these facilities and services should be managed, aiming to adapt the university's practices to the Technological Innovation Law (Law 10.973 /2004) – regulated in the state of São Paulo by the State Innovation Decree (Decree 62.817/2017) – and the Multi-User Equipment (EMUs) policy of Fapesp, as well as Finep, Capes and other development agencies.
“In this way, more than giving visibility to the set of equipment and services available at Unicamp, the new Multi-User Equipment and Services Portal constitutes the first step in the implementation of a unified policy for the use of all this heritage by the community internal and external to the university ”, stated Skaf.
link: https://www.prp.unicamp.br/pt-br/ces/site/
