Share(hard)ware

Top faculty in interdisciplinary fields like nanotechnology and bioinformatics increasingly need expensive, high-powered equipment to do their jobs; it can be the price of admission for competing at the highest levels of their fields.

One of Rice’s newest weapons in the battle to attract and retain these top faculty isn’t a piece of equipment, however—it’s a new way of managing the instruments that are already here.

At Rice, the management and maintenance of research instruments historically has been handled by academic departments. Rice’s new Shared Equipment Authority (SEA) grew out of a broadening awareness that department-level management was ill-suited for extremely expensive instruments that are in high demand by users across departments. SEA now manages some 20 instruments that previously were maintained by departments in the Wiess School of Natural Sciences and George R. Brown School of Engineering.

In addition to ensuring that all faculty have access to the big-ticket equipment that is increasingly needed to land competitive research grants, SEA helps to maximize the useful life span of high-dollar instruments. For most of these machines, Rice will spend an amount equal to the purchase price to keep them up-to-date and operational over a 10-year life cycle.

Some of the equipment will be available to researchers outside Rice. One example is a state-of-the-art 800 MHz nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer purchased by the Gulf Coast Consortium (GCC) with a $750,000 grant from the John S. Dunn Research Foundation and a $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation. It will become part of the shared facilities of the John S. Dunn, Sr. Gulf Coast Consortium for Magnetic Resonance. While some 35 GCC researchers are interested in high-field NMR research, there have been only two high-field instruments in the entire Gulf Coast region. The addition of Rice’s instrument and another at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston will double that capacity.

Most SEA equipment is available only within the Rice community, however. This is advantageous in recruiting young faculty because it is much easier for junior faculty to get time on high-dollar instruments at Rice than at larger state institutions. But Rice’s small size makes for a real challenge in the area of cost recovery because there just aren’t enough billable hours on the machines to cover the rising cost of maintenance. That’s why SEA encourages external use of its instruments by industry and other academic organizations.

SEA is governed by a 15-member faculty committee chaired by Vicki Colvin, associate professor of chemistry and director of the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology. Colvin says that SEA is committed to holding user fees to their lowest possible level. Toward that end, the committee is working with the Office of Development to obtain endowed funds earmarked for instrument stewardship.

“With the right level of funding, Rice could do away with internal user fees altogether,” Colvin says. “That would give our faculty, particularly our junior faculty, free access to instruments that they just couldn’t get, or would have to pay a lot for, at a bigger school. That would make Rice very attractive to innovative young researchers.”

—Jade Boyd