challenges and opportunities of establishing a self-sustaining university laboratory: the case of northern analytical lab services (nals) at the university of northern british columbia (unbc)

The struggle to equip, maintain, operate, upgrade, and expand a university research and service laboratory has long been a challenge in academia. securing and maintaining appropriate funding for research laboratories is the central obstacle most scientists face in their careers. all research laboratories require financial support for their consumable, to subsidize lab equipment, and to pay research staffs’ salaries and benefits. there is new and promising model that might provide a sustainable solution to this everlasting problem. some north american universities-particularly small size universities- are considering the establishment of central equipment facilities. the main mandates of these centralized instrumental analysis laboratories is to provide research and testing services the university researchers under a fee-for-service (ffs) model. while the ffs model might help the central labs to cover the cost of their consumables and partial cost of equipment maintenance, however, they need to diversify their source of funding to be able to operate, maintain and upgrade the facility sustainably.therefore, revenue generation through conducting client-based research and development projects as well as providing routine and none-routine testing services, are being considered as viable options. to attract external clients (both from industries and local communities), a university-based lab facilities might need to pursue accreditation efforts as an effective trust-building measure with their clients and service users. to become an accredited facility, they need to invest on infrastructure as well as hiring (and retaining) highly qualified personnel (e.g., analytical lab specialists, quality assurance officer).in this talk, successes, and challenges of the northern analytical lab services (nals) as the central equipment facility at the university of northern british columbia (unbc) will be shared and discussed. under new leadership in 2016, the nals was created as a central equipment lab to address the growing need for analytical services at the university of northern british columbia in prince george, bc. the nals is home to an extensive suite of analytical science instrumentation that enables a broad spectrum of in-house, provincially, federally, and internationally accredited biological, chemical, and physical analyses. nals services are available to the private, public and non-profit sectors to help meet their research, development, analytical and quality assurance needs. in 2022, pacifican, a new canadian federal agency, invested 1.92 m to establish the “northern bc’s environmental & climate solutions innovation hub” in the nals that will allow for the increased and expedited development and prototyping of new materials and technologies. this will help solve pressing environmental concerns in northern b.c. in sectors including water management, mining, forestry, and bioenergy. as of october 2021, nals is accredited to iso 17025:2017 with the standards council of canada. as of may 2021 nals also accredited by the eastern water quality association for e.coli and coliforms in water. this means the nals is committed to providing high quality and defensible data by participating and passing regular proficiency testing rounds.