Collaborations and services
We collaborate with dozens of groups worldwide and are open for new challenges. We try our best to requests, but we are not a platform, we are not subsidized to help, and we don't have the human resources to accomodate all requests. We have to prioritize and decide case by case depending on capacity and on the specific of the request.
Our specialties includes:
- high-throughput and large scale metabolomics and lipidomics
- stable isotope based flux experiments (low and high throughput)
- data analysis in the context of biological networks
- data integration across omics.
Such methods are continously developed in our lab in the context of scientific problems we have to solve. This requires expertise, experience, a deep understanding of the underlying biological system, and specific design of the experimental and computational approach. We love to collaborate on problems that (i) require expert knowhow or (ii) drive novel research directions and development. If you think that your project is suited, please get in touch to discuss needs and opportunities!
Incentives to collaborate:
- You have a clearly defined biological question, a rationale for running metabolomics/lipidomics, expectations on what a good result will be.
- The analysis is compatible with our existing workflows.
- It's a difficult project, that can't be addressed by a "traditional" core lab.
- There is a plan on how to analyse data.
- The project presents an important challenge that is in line with some of our work, or might lead to new, innovative developments that are of interest.
- The study is likely to turn into a long-term partnership
- Direct costs are covered.
Problems that prevent us from helping:
- Ethical approval is missing.
- Tedious samples have to be prepared by us (extraction from tissues, feces, gavage, ...)
- Lack of controls.
Costs
Collaborating is not a mean to avoid costs. All of our activities involve a substantial committment of resources (expert personnel, instruments, material). Regardless how much we like the science, we can't accomodate external collaborations for free.
If we see a good fit, we are happy to help with grant applications.
Joint project applications
If we see fit, we support you with grant applications. There are two levels of engagement.
- The first is as mere service providers: we receive samples, run the analysis at a predefined fee and return the results, without any engagement in the interpretation or secondary analysis of data.
- The second is scientific collaborators, to support in the design, analysis, integration, interpretation, and paper writing. This requires us to be intellectiually engaged in the science, and committ an experienced researech in the mid to long term. Understanding the underlying biology and the key questions is essential to advise on the overall experimental strategy or design, to optimize our approach, to identify novel opportunities, and to build on prior knowledge of our collaborators for data analysis and interpretation.