Commercial users may only use CMSE facilities to the extent that such work does not interfere in any way with MIT and other academic research.
The Shared Experimental Facilities were established and are operated for the purpose of supporting MIT and other academic research, which will always be given precedence over commercial work.
Once given an appointment, a commercial user
will not be "bounced" because an academic user comes along with an
urgent project. However, if the Facility staff know, or expect, that the
instrument, or their own, time will be fully committed without giving time to a
commercial user, they are expected to decline to give an appointment to a
prospective outside user, even if that user has an approved application and a
valid purchase order on file. Please note that this is not saying that a
commercial user will have to wait for a while for an appointment.
Rather, it is saying that they may get no appointment at all. Further, if
an instrument malfunction or other emergency occurs, and requires appointments
to be cancelled, the Facility staff are required to cancel commercial users
first, and reschedule them last, in all cases giving MIT and other academic
users priority wherever possible.
The usual operating mode of the Shared Experimental Facilities is that the users operate the instrumentation themselves after a suitable training period. For outside users, this policy is not strictly applied, and in particular outside personnel will not be trained to operate the instruments. However, personnel from the outside organization are required to be present during the characterization, and are expected to understand the techniques being used, and to guide the SEF staff member as the work proceeds. SEF staff will not under any circumstances perform labor-intensive tasks (such as specimen preparation) for outside users. SEF staff will not prepare reports, transmit results, or similar tasks. The Shared Experimental Facilities do not offer a comprehensive “characterization service” such as might be provided by a commercial analytical laboratory.
MIT-CMSE September 2007