Introduction (External)

Welcome to the University of Minnesota Characterization Facility (CharFac)!

CharFac has a long history of providing analytical services and training to academics spread across the US and beyond. In the case of training we are similar to (hands-on) user facilities accessible at national labs. We differ in that we must charge instrument user fees (not exorbitant). But we do not require or evaluate formal research proposals, beyond discussing the general appropriateness of our instrumentation and methods to your research problem. In other respects we are like a commercial analytical services provider, whereby you send us samples and we send you data and in some cases analysis of this data.

CharFac charges separately for instrument and staff time. Our instrument charge rates to your grants are only 20% above those charged to UMinn users (to recoup some of the indirect cost recovery that our university does not receive from your grants). Staff time charges are closer to the rates charged to our commercial clients. An exception is a type of collaborative research whereby your grants directly subcontract our unit (i.e., federal funding comes directly to UMinn), and thus your grants are charged at the same rates as UMinn users for both instrument and staff time. Our rate sheet for academic users external to the UMN details these various pricing scenarios.

Beyond charging rubric, we are eager to establish collaborations for the sake of intellectual value. This is especially true when unique instrumentation and/or expertise on our end is combined with unique synthesis/fabrication and/or expertise at your end, to yield novel measurements and science (materials, pharma, bio, enviro, geo, anthro, ...).

In any case we welcome discussions of your research problem whether it spawns a fruitful (in publication) collaboration or simply spurs analytical services or training for independent use.