The human brain is a complex and unique organ. Understanding how it function and associated pathologies means acquiring data for each organizational level (molecular, cellular, neural…) and each instant. The Institut du Cerveau – ICM’s founders wanted to give their research teams the instrumental and organizational means to reach their goals. From its inception, the Institut du Cerveau – ICM created a structure around shared high-level technological and human resources necessary for research development.
Beyond making innovative material available, the mission of Institut du Cerveau – ICM core facilities is skill pooling and provision of service and expertise for the entire scientific community: Institut du Cerveau – ICM research teams, external academic teams, incubated companies and external companies.
Platforms are distributed according research fields by silo based on their scale of analysis: molecular exploration, cellular exploration, imaging, preclinical functional exploration, functional exploration, bio-informatics and banks.
The Institut du Cerveau – ICM has a Platform Steering Committee dedicated to coordinating platform activities and implementing the Institut du Cerveau – ICM’s general policy guidelines. Directed by Etienne HIRSH (Teal leader, PhD, DRCE, CNRS), this committee is composed of representatives from platform and support function silos.
Each platform is steered by an operational and a scientific manager.
The scientific manager is an expert in the platform’s field and is in charge of prospective and strategic thinking. The operational manager is in charge of the core facility functioning, operational staff, service reliability and client satisfaction. He is also in charge of interacting with the Institute’s administrative services.
Institut du Cerveau – ICM platforms provide two types of services:
- Equipment, with user training on how to use equipment or how to implement various techniques
- Service provision from the design to the result’s analysis.