Careers

From BioImagingUKWiki

Revision as of 04:53, 5 May 2010

Topics

Defining policies and funding models to enable long-term career development and security for personnel dedicated to development and access of the latest imaging technology

Members

Peter March (Univ. Manchester) Jason Swedlow (Univ of Dundee) Martin Spitaler (Imperial) Amanda Wilson (Kings)

Background

The UK has invested heavily in facilities for research and clinical imaging. The range of resources and technologies available to support cutting edge research rivals that in any other country in the world. Purchase of imaging instrumentation is, however, only the first step in the delivery of the world-class imaging-based scientific discovery. The fast technical advances in the area of life imaging, facility staff are required to stay up to date with the latest development and make them accessible for the life scientist, and thus play a critical role in maintaining competitiveness and ensuring access to the latest technology. In many cases complex imaging systems must be administered, monitored, maintained, and sometimes run by trained staff who have chosen to take a dedicated career path in running imaging facilities. These staff also play a critical in training young scientists in the use and application of these systems, and thus provide a critical contribution in preparing the next generation of UK scientists. They help guarantee continuity in labs and facilities, ensuring that technical know-how and experimental protocols are passed along as postdocs and PhD students turn over. Scientific productivity in imaging thus depends on the imaging technicians and officers.

Against this critical role for imaging technicians and officers lies the simple fact that careers are often well-managed, recognition in publications is often rare, and compromised, as the value of a middle-position on an author line is often minimized. In too many cases, instrumentation is sought, funded, and purchased, without concern for scientific support personnel, thus compromising the value of the original funding investment. Universities looking to cut salary budgets often see “opportunities” in these positions, overlooking the critical value these staff deliver to the overall research effort, and the ultimate delivery of output from funding for teaching and research (and certainly the success of future funding initiatives).

Activities

These notes are from the Core Facilities Managers Meeting sub-group on careers that took place at Imperial College London in January 2010. From the round table discussions that took place it’s clear that most facilities operate around broadly similar ideas and this would make job descriptions for an imaging facility possible. On the other hand the way the facility is seen and organised within the various academic institutions was highly variable. There was a feeling that organisation such as BioImagingUK and EuroBioImaging could help define the role of an imaging facility and generate a real career path for members of these facilities.

How do you become a facility manager?

Most managers have PhD and post-doctoral experience and were often heavy users of the microscopes for this research. This then evolved into being the facility manager by a series of small steps and moves rather than a single jump via an advertised and defined position. This often resulted in a gray area of what exactly was the role of the facility manager, how should it be organised and how should it be financed.

What is expected of a facility manager?

Universal: The training of new users, maintenance and trouble shooting of the systems to ensure they are in full working order, record keeping of hours used and charges, development of new techniques and methods.

Variations: Some were also expected to run internal and external microscopy workshops. Teaching of undergraduate courses, tutorial groups, the supervision of undergraduate students on microscopy projects, the full supervision of PhD students in addition to the facility.

Status of a microscope facility manager?

This varied widely and may be a result of the academic institutions setup and the role that they were expected to play. Some felt that they were seen as nothing more than technicians - there to train, clean and organise. Others were expected to be a full member of the academic staff responsible for grant applications, PhD supervision and teaching loads.

Recommendations

We propose the following improvements:

Funding bodies should:

1. make support staff an essential part of their science infrastructure funding strategy;
2. for all major infrastructure funding, require a business plan for its long-term support;
3. require the inclusion of a sufficient number of long-term positions for support staff, the funding of which should be a normal part of the grant application;
4. where community access to specialized instrumentation is proposed, funding for staff to support use by external visiting scientists is requested and,provided where justified

Institutions should:

1. make 'staff scientists' a normal part of their research strategy
2. have a long-term plan for the career structure, mentoring, and development of support staff, that recognizes contribution and performance outside the traditional university roles of primary research and teaching;
3. include facility staff in strategic planning
4. plan for continuity, as staff inevitably turnover, so that practical experience and knowledge can be transferred from older to younger staff and students

Both should:

1. identify facility staff as an essential strategic investment to maximise the return on their respective investments
2. make facility staff as an essential part of their business plan
3. realise and support the important role of facility staff for training, education, outreach and potentially connections to the business world; these added values
4. create new benchmarks to review the functioning of facilities, and most importantly, scientific technicians and officer;
5. devise novel approaches for continuity and traing, e.g.,younger technical staff that are already experienced to an extent, but still have at least (10yrs?) before they retire, could spend (a month?) at a different facility to their own, apprenticed to a senior/v.experienced staff member, learning a new specific skill or set of related skills. The training would be one-to-one, and be more in-depth and 'on-the-job' than a course-based approach; in other words, a genuine opportunity for transfer of advanced/specialised skills
6. collaborate to define a new method of evaluation that defines value in publications beyond the traditional first author/senior author delineation and includes a broader set of indicators of performance and contribution, e.g.,

usage of equipment number and quality of projects performed trainings and general education on new developments access to the general scientific community implementation of new techniques standardised user feedback (many added values are hard to quantify otherwise) outreach activities

Resources

• Facility managers' meeting