MNMR Center Policies

The Minnesota NMR Center's goal is to make state-of-the-art instrumental resources available to researchers, providing a venue for them to pursue their projects and develop their experience in NMR methods. Top priorities of the center personnel are to maintain the performance of these instruments at the highest level and to provide basic training to new users. In addition, the resident expertise in the center is available to facilitate NMR efforts and contribute to the scientific research efforts of users in the development of strategies for data collection and analysis. The application of NMR to research projects employs some of the most complex and expensive instruments used in scientific research. The training procedures and operating policies reflect the need to protect the instrumentation investment as well as produce safe, efficient and effective use of the instruments.

• Instrument time requests will be filled on a “first come, first served” basis
• MNMR staff may adjust scheduled time to maximize instrument usage or troubleshoot instrument problems.  In such cases, the requestor will be consulted.
• Users who cancel their reserved time less than 24 hours in advance are subject to a cancellation fee equal to the amount of remaining reserved time up to 24 hours, unless another user takes the newly-opened time.
• Users who do not cancel their reservation and only uses a portion of their reserved time, will be charged for the entirety of their reservation
• No research group may exceed 2 weeks NMR time on a single instrument in a month unless there are no competing requests.
• Any exchange of time between users must be reported to MNMR staff.

A prospective user of the center should read the statement and policies for the center request training from the MNMR staff. New users are expected to understand basic NMR concepts before beginning training.  New users are required to enroll in an  NMR Workshop held several times throughout the year, or schedule one-on-one training with and MNMR staff member. After completing the workshop, trainees should plan to spend time practicing during regular hours when center staff can be present to assist. Basic instrument charges will be applied for any training hours outside the workshop.

New users are expected to work during regular business hours when assistance is available or work with an experienced member of their research group.

Additional training for advanced experiments should be discussed with and can be arranged through the center personnel. Requests from all those who expect to use the instrumentation sporadically may need additional review if the gaps between use are likely to raise the need for re-training in order to insure safe and efficient operation of the instruments. The decision to train users from outside the University will be handled on a case-by-case basis considering such factors as: an individual's previous NMR experience, available instrument and center personnel time, and available resources to support this activity.

MNMR reserves the right to deny user privileges to anyone if the individual has insufficient knowledge and engages in unsafe practices or other unacceptable behavior. Users may not allow any other users or unauthorized users to use their accounts or have access to their accounts on the spectrometer workstations. Providing unauthorized users access to accounts and to the instruments will result in loss of center access and user privileges.

To regain user privileges, the user may be required to do one or more of the following: re-take the practical NMR workshop, pass a check-out test, and/or participate in one-on-one training with center personnel. Upon completion of re-training, the user will be granted limited access to the instruments After a probationary period, the center personnel will re-evaluate the user's status and privileges based on the user's research requirements and skills as an independent, effective user of the NMR instruments.

• The NMR center is located in a card-access only area of the Mayo building. New users are granted card access upon successful completion of their training and required forms.
• When new users finish training, accounts will be created for them on the instruments as needed. Users are responsible for saving, archiving, and moving their data. Although the center does back up all computers, all users are responsible for backing up their own data. The center is not responsible for user data and does not archive user data.
• Instrument time is reserved on Wednesdays from 8 am to 12 noon for cryogen fills and other maintenance. Experiments that need to infringe on this time require prior approval from the center personnel. Notices of repairs, down time due to building utility interruptions or any other interruption in service will be sent via email and posted on the web site.
• While this is a user center, under special circumstances and special arrangement, data collection by staff can be arranged at assisted rates.
• Probe changes will be done by center personnel only, unless special permission is given.
• Remote operation of the instruments is not allowed without approval.
• The center reserves the right to deny user privileges to anyone if the individual has insufficient knowledge and engages in unsafe practices or other unacceptable behavior.
• Users may not allow any other users or unauthorized users to use their accounts or have access to their accounts on the spectrometer workstations.
• Users are asked to report problems as soon as possible so that the personnel may address them.

Users can submit requests for NMR time through a link on the MNMR website. Requests for NMR time will be filled based on the order received and every effort will be made to ensure equality in the distribution of scheduled time. The schedule is posted and can be viewed under the Schedule section that is under menu Spectrometers. The staff has the discretion to make schedule adjustments on short notice, if necessary, to balance specific requirements, and in an effort to optimize instrument use. Academic rates apply only to NMR time used for academic research.

Users MUST sign the log books at the given instrument each time they log into the workstation. The following information should be included each time: user name/group, start date and time, end date and time, an account string for charges, and experiment information (including any problems). Charges will be levied as indicated by the cancellation procedures for time that is reserved, but not used, unless the cancellation procedures above are followed. Regardless of whether and experiment was successful or not, the user can be charged for the time used unless the experiment failed as a result of either a hardware or software problem (this must be verified by the center personnel). Any verified problem MUST be indicated in the log books in the comments section for the block of time that was affected.

To help avoid unused blocks of time, users should plan their experiments carefully and inform the staff of any unnecessary time as soon as possible. Center personnel may make exceptions to the below policies on a case-by-case basis.

Cancelled Time: Users who cancel their reserved time less than 24 hours in advance are subject to a cancellation fee equal to the amount of remaining reserved time up to 24 hours, unless another user takes the newly-opened time.

Unused Time: In the event that a user does not cancel their reservation and only uses a portion of their reserved time, they can be charged for the entirety of their reservation.

Center personnel provide a resource for enhancing the effectiveness of the NMR Center through teaching, training and interacting with users which can augment expertise in the individual research groups. While major instructional priority of the staff is to provide operational training to users, we anticipate that their knowledge and expertise will be called upon to varying degrees by users in the pursuit of the research projects for such things as developing new applications, implementing new pulse sequences, optimizing experiments for particular systems, and processing and analysis of multidimensional NMR data. Not only do such efforts involve the investment of time on the part of the personnel, but also may constitute significant intellectual and scientific contributions to the research project. Depending on the magnitude of these contributions, appropriate support for, and recognition of, these efforts needs to be made. Situations involving significant time commitments on the part of the personnel should be arranged in advance through personnel and the director. Users are also expected to invest time in enhancing and expanding their knowledge and proficiency in NMR and to utilize the expertise available within their research group in order to become more independent.

Personnel have the option of voluntarily engaging in collaborative projects at a level that does not overwhelm their responsibilities. This option provides an opportunity for them to keep current in the field and maintain their scientific standing. Occasional NMR spectral service is provided with the requestor being charged for personnel time.

The Minnesota NMR Center Steering Committee will consist of the following: Director, BMBB Chair, NMR Managers, PIs of major users, MNMR Accounting Manager. This committee will meet 4 times a year to assess the status of the center and give recommendations regarding the direction of the center and its financial compliance.

The External Advisory Committee will consist of the following: University of Minnesota senior faculty, director of other university research centers, directors of NMR related programs at the University of Minnesota, NMR specialists. The advisory committee will meet once a year to judge the direction of the center and evaluate the scientific and educational progress.

The committee for the MNMR Center is comprised of facility personnel (Dr. Xia, Dr. Gopinath, Dr. Rossi and Todd Rappe), Dr. Mayo (Director of the MNMR Center), Dr. Bernlohr (BMBB, Chair), Dr. Veglia (BMBB), Dr. Armitage (BMBB), Dr. Thomas (BMBB), Dr. Pomerantz (Chemistry), and Terri Ritz (Director of the Financial Office, BMBB/GCD). Two additional committee members were recently added as representatives of the Medical School: Dr. Garwood (Radiology) and Dr. Oz (Radiology). Sarah Nelson (Graduate Student BMBB) is the representative of the users.

A staff person should be included as a co-author in any publication that received a significant intellectual contribution from that person. Significant intellectual input may include experimental design and optimization, interpretation and analysis of results, or writing (editing) significant portions of a manuscript. Research advisors should contact the director with questions about this policy or about a staff person's contribution to a project. If a publication contains routine data that was obtained with minimal assistance from a staff person, co-authorship is not required, but recognition of that staff person in Acknowledgements is recommended. Such acknowledgements help document the value of the center personnel to the research community. Service fees charged for experimental data collection do not serve as a substitute for proper acknowledgement or co-authorship of center personnel.

If you publish data collected at MNMR Center please include the “Minnesota NMR Center” in your acknowledgements and if the particular journal’s space requirements permit, please include the “Funding for NMR instrumentation was provided by the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Medical School, the College of Biological Science, NIH, NSF, and the Minnesota Medical Foundation." in your acknowledgements.

We welcome all external clients into the Minnesota NMR Center. Instruments rates are accessible through the website. Additional fees will be added for staff time and supplies to cover costs to the center and will vary based on each request. You are free to inquire about the instruments and what experiments to run with the staff to help determine the instrumentation to use at no charge.