MIC, an open core facility

MIC- High level of service and access for all researchers

MIC is an ideal type core facility that does both methods development, and on the basis of the former, provides services within a wide range of imaging modalities at a pay per service basis. The MIC staff sees its users as customers and the level of service is accordingly. The researchers at MIC do not themselves provide service, but their developments are combined by those of highly skilled technical staff into state of the art services both in terms of sample preparation, training on and use of equipment as well as a new bioimaging informatics effort offering safe storage/retrieval of data as well as tailoring of automatized analysis. These services are offered to all researchers in Norway, but there is a distinction in the service fee between external and internal users.

Service fees

Service fees at MIC are low compared to the total costs occurring at MIC. Our effective prices in most cases only partially cover the full hourly running costs of the instruments, and this is especially valid for the small animal imaging devices like MR and PET where the full cost prices are very high. The prices are calculated based on the TDI-model that was implemented in the University sector in 2014 and that all core facilities are obliged to follow.

We operate with two price categories; academic price and commercial activity. Internal users will not be charged VAT (moms), wheras external users will be charged VAT on top of the price listed.

Some relevant definitions:
Internal users: Users with project accounts at the University of Bergen or UniResearch and thereby can be invoiced internally.
External users: Users with project accounts anywhere else (HelseVest/Bergen, NIFES, other Universities etc.). The user's affiliation doesn’t make a difference.
Academic price: Any activity that is non-economical, like research that has no commercial interest or is commission research for a commercial company.
Commercial price: Any activity that is economical included commission research for a commercial company.

The income from the use of an instrument is accumulated into the corresponding instrument account and mainly spent for maintenance and upgrades and thereby secures operational and well-functioning equipment at all times.

Own and others equipment

MIC both has its own as well as administers others' equipment which alleviates the owner from all administrative tasks like ordering, booking and invoicing, transferring the yearly balance and thus either receives a bill or a money transfer by the end of the year. MICs own equipment ranges from confocal-, electron-, and live cell microscopes to a small animal MR machine situated at the Vivarium animal facility  and a small animal PET/CT at the Haukeland PET-center. Of others’ equipment, MIC administers small animal Optical Imagers and a small animal Ultra Sound system, which is owned respectively by K2 and K1. MIC also administers the booking and invoicing of the facility for Flow Cytometry (K2).