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. This translates 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, Monoclonal Antibody and Chemical Biology.