Policies and Procedures

Policies and procedures for the use of the CNSI ALMS facilities:

For use the microscopes and other equipment in the CNSI Advanced Light Microscopy Facility, you agree to the following:

IMPORTANT: Please cite our RRID# (RRID:SCR_022789) when publishing images collected using equipment from ALMS! 

Example: “Confocal laser scanning microscopy [or whatever you used: e.g. Two-photon, Light-sheet, FLIM, Experiments/Data analysis etc…] was performed at the Advanced Light Microscopy/Spectroscopy Laboratory and Leica Microsystems Center of Excellence at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA (RRID:SCR_022789) with funding support from NIH Shared Instrumentation Grant S10OD025017 and NSF Major Research Instrumentation grant CHE-0722519″.

Other policies to which you must agree:

1. That you will follow all the rules for use of the facility and the instructions of the directors.
2. That you will be responsible for keeping the instruments in good working order and cleaning up after yourself.
3. That you will be responsible for any damages or loss to the equipment.
4. That any publication cover that you get from images taken in the Facility, that you will provide a publisher’s copy of that cover to the Facility for display.We would be most pleased to display it in the Facility with credit to you and your lab.

Laser and Laboratory Safety

For the ALMS Facility, lasers play an important part in the work being done with nearly every instrument and there are hazards in working with them. Every person working in the ALMS/MSI Core Facilities is required to take basic Laser Safety Training from UCLA Environmental Health and Safety (EHS). The Laboratory Safety Training should have been taken as a prerequisite to your working in a UCLA laboratory.We require that you also take laser safety as you will no doubt be using lasers in the course of your work within the ALMS/MIS laboratories. Visit the UCLA Environmental Health and Safety webpage and scroll down to: Classroom Training Descriptions and Schedule to sign up for any of these training courses. You will be required to bring a copy of your laser safety certification card as EHS requires that we have it on record.

Laboratory safety is an important issue here at UCLA. To comply with UCLA and OSHA regulations, all personnel working in UCLA laboratories are required to have the laboratory and biohazard safety trainings appropriate for the particular lab work they are doing. Basic Laboratory Safety Training should have been taken as a prerequisite to your working in a UCLA laboratory.

If you intend to work with any living tissue culture cells in the laboratory, you will be expected to conform to our BSL2 Standard Operating Procedures and conform to your own lab’s BSL2 certification.

If you intend to work with live or whole animals, your lab must have an animal research protocol approved by the UCLA Animal Research Committee.

In addition to laboratory and laser safety trainings, you must have taken the following EHS trainings to conform to BSL2 Standards and the Facility’s BSL2 certification:

• Biosafety Cabinet (once)
• BSL2 (every 3 years, unless using oncogene inserts, need to take BSL2+)
• Medical Waste Management (every 3 years)
• Bloodborne Pathogen (annually)
• Hazardous Chemical Waste (annually)

While we do not keep records of all of your trainings (except laser safety), your principal investigator is required to have all of these on record in your lab’s safety manual.
You will also be required to view a slide presentation outlining the particular safety features and procedures for the ALMS and MIS laboratories.

If you are bringing any living cells into the Facility, please be prepared to:

1. Give us exact information as to what tissue culture cell lines they are and any transfections or viruses used in their preparation for use in the ALMS/MIS laboratories.
2. Show us records of the above trainings (from your lab safety manual) if we are required by higher authorities (EHS, Cal OSHA) to prove that you are in compliance. We do not want to endanger any certifications that we have or will have. This would hurt everyone.
3. If working with animals in the ALMS/MIS laboratories, please be prepared to show proof of your animal research protocols also if we are required by higher authorities (EHS, Cal OSHA) to prove that you are in compliance.

For the ALMS Facility, lasers play an important part in the work being done with nearly every instrument and there are hazards in working with them. Every person working in the ALMS/MSI Core Facilities is required to take basic Laser Safety Training from UCLA Environmental Health and Safety (EHS). The Laboratory Safety Training should have been taken as a prerequisite to your working in a UCLA laboratory.We require that you also take laser safety as you will no doubt be using lasers in the course of your work within the ALMS/MIS laboratories.   Sign up and take EH&S Embedded Laser safety training (Click  on “Go To Worksafe Now” at  https://www.ehs.ucla.edu/training-support/overview). You will be required to bring a copy of your laser safety certification card as EHS requires that we have it on record