The challenges and opportunities running a behavioral core facility offers

Schedule: Wednesday 6th June, 16:00 - 17:00, G36

Presenters

• Lior Bikovski, Director of the Myers Neuro-Behavioral Core Facility, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Israel
• Michael Tsoory, Head of the Behavioral and Physiological Phenotyping Unit at the Department of Veterinary Resources, the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot Area, Israel
• Lianne Strachan, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at University of Aberdeen, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom, Previously the Behavioural Neuroscience Core Facility Manager at University of Dundee, Dundee, UK
• Åsa Konradsson-Geuken, Coordinator of the Uppsala University Behavioral Facility (UUBF), University of Uppsala, Sweden

Background
An increasing number of universities, research institutes and companies invest in behavioral core facilities in order to concentrate specific knowledge, assure a high standard of work and provide these specific services to the largest group of people possible. However, running a core facility on a day-to-day basis comes with its own set of challenges and unique opportunities. The quality of research done at these facilities relies on the ability of the facility managers to engage specific challenges and to bridge the gap between communal and specific needs, as well as the need to identify novel trends and foresee future directions that may be relevant to the core users.

Benefit
During this tutorial, the audience will learn about the challenges and opportunities that arise when running a behavioral core facility. The aim is to give the audience the ability to use these lessons in their own lab environments.

Content
Topics being discussed will be:
-    How to provide an environment where new ideas can flourish and a high standard of work can be achieved
-    How to plan a new behavioral study
-    What is calibration in behavioral studies
-    How to utilize the variety of mouse models and the range of behavioral methods a core facility offers together with the personnel’s practical experience to develop new tools: lessons from past and ongoing projects
-    Standardization in core facility work, how to look at results across different users.

Audience
This tutorial is of interest to anybody doing behavioral research.