Facility Policies

Biosafety
The facility is a Biosafety Level II area. It is the responsibility of the user and their PI to ensure that all users of the facility have passed the appropriate McMaster safety courses. For information on these courses contact the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHSc) Safety Office.

Users are obliged to make themselves familiar with the location of the facility's safety equipment. A map of the facility marking the location of the safety equipment can be found here: MAP LINK.

Please speak to a member of facility staff if you require further clarification.

Access to the facility
You must receive official training from a member of facility staff for each piece of equipment before you will be issued with a user name and password for each workstation. Official training can be organized through facility staff. Please fill in the New User registration form and email us. You must not let others use your name and password.

Facility Hours
Facility hours are  9am-5pm Mon-Thurs; 9am-3pm Friday. Permission to work outside these hours is at the discretion of facility staff. Keys for each room are available where necessary at the discretion of the facility staff. Please fill out the Out-of-hours request form.

Restrictions on booking
While there are no current restrictions on booking, it is requested that you minimize your booking slots to 3 hours/day as a courtesy to other uses. If self-regulation does not work, restriction may have to be enforced.

Cancellations
If you do not attend your booking within 30 minutes of its start, you are liable to loose the entire session to another user.
Users are free to edit their bookings up to 24 hours before the time of the booking. If you wish to cancel your booking after this cut-off, please inform us via email.
If the email notification of a change in booking arrives prior to the booking slot, no fee will be charged. If a slot is booked but cancelled after 30 minutes in once it is apparent that the experiment has not worked, email us and you will only be charged for the part of the hour used.
Failure to notify of a change in the booking will result in the full period being charged.
Many facilities automatically charge for no-shows or cancellations, regardless of the reason. Short-notice cancellations are considered ‘revenue-lost’; something facilities operating on a self-funding basis cannot afford to do. However, we feel that such an inflexible system would unfairly punish researchers that have genuine reasons for not being able to attend or cut-short a booking. Please do not abuse this courtesy otherwise it may need reassessing.

Data policies
Users are responsible for their own data files. The facility accepts no responsibility for data loss. Data more than three months old may be subject to deletion if space on the server becomes critically low. We recommend a portable hard drive to transfer data. DVD burners are available for use on the offline workstations as well.

Internet usage
Standard university internet policies apply. Users are responsible for their passwords and any misuse that occurs through their account. There should be no reason to download files to these computers. Please contact facility staff if you feel that you need to.

Facility staff must be notified immediately if you suspect that you have inadvertently infected facility computers.

Users responsible for computer misuse resulting in disruption of facility systems will receive an initial warning. Repeat offenders will be contacted along with their PI and then subsequently charged for repair costs.