ayout 1 - EMBL Grenoble

Core Facilities
The Core Facilities at EMBL in Heidelberg were established soon after the Scientific Advisory Committee and
EMBL Council approved the new scientific directions for the 2001-2005 Scientific Programme. EMBL Council was
generous enough to provide some extra funding in the context of the new indicative scheme for this initiative. The
main idea behind this decision was to try to provide a number of high level support teams that would help EMBL’s
scientific community by providing easy access to well-equipped facilities, both in terms of human resources and
state of the art equipment.
The basic concept for the Core Facilities had been tested some years earlier (starting in 1998) when the Advanced
Light Microscopy Facility (ALMF) was created. The ALMF was considered as the ‘gold standard’ for the establishment
of the new facilities. The support activities need to be tailored to the demands of the community and the staff
members hired for such activities need to clearly understand their role. The support activities also need to evolve
with the science carried out in the units of the laboratory. Having functioning Core Facilities proves to be advantageous
for the scientists using them, not only in terms of workload and efficiency aspects but also in terms of cost of
projects. The continuous investment in state-of-the-art technologies allows EMBL scientists and external visitors
from our member states to have access to a set of advanced technology platforms.
Today, the facilities are Advanced Light Microscopy, Genomics, Proteomics, Protein Expression and Purification,
Electron Microscopy, Flow Cytometry and Chemical Biology.
Christian Boulin
Unit Coordinator of Core Facilities and Services