“The Clustermarket equipment booking system covers all of our needs and offers a great value-to-price ratio. We use it to manage our microscope and service bookings as well as to run reports on the equipment usage. The team offers a great level of service and takes our feedback into consideration when improving the system.”
Institute's profile
The UCD Conway Imaging Core facility is part of the UCD Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research at University College Dublin. It helps both academic and industry researchers by providing the highest level of expertise in microscopic techniques. The facility is directed by Dr. Dimitri Scholz, and offers cutting edge imaging and know-how to researchers in a customizable range of services at each stage of their research pathway. This state-of-the-art core facility has over 20 instruments, including two transmission electron microscopes (TEM) from Thermo Fisher and one Carl Zeiss scanning electron microscope (SEM), as well as transmission light microscopes and fluorescent light microscopes from Carl Zeiss, Olympus and Nikon. The integrated suite of instruments spans all aspects of light and electron microscopy as well as sample preparation and image processing and analysis.
- Number of users: 137
- Number of instruments: 20
- Type of facility: Imaging and microscopy
- Research areas: Biomedical light and electron microscopy, live cell imaging, nano-particles, bio-artificial interfaces
- Location: Dublin, Ireland
- Previous system: SharedPerspective
Research
The UCD Conway Imaging Core facility supports microscopical research projects for internal users at the University College Dublin as well as external users. Being the central point for microscopical and imaging research projects, the core facility supports a broad range of scientific fields. These range from medicine, veterinary, cell biology, chemistry and physics to archeology, forensics, and more.
Problem
Invoicing was one of the main issues for the Imaging Core facility that required a lot of admin work and time. In addition, the system used by the facility was difficult to manage - while it was intended for equipment management it was a lot of hassle to add additional or new equipment as well as edit existing instruments.
Solution
After implementing the Clustermarket equipment scheduling software, UCD Conway Imaging Core facility solved all of their invoicing problems - thanks to the handy tailored reports feature that Clustermarket offers. As well as that, adding new instruments and editing existing ones is now easier than ever - with Clustermarket this can be done with a few simple clicks, all within the handy lab management tool.
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