Accessing the X-ray Crystallography Facility

To gain autonomous access to the facility you must complete the following online courses, Cryogenic Liquids and Decanting Liquid Nitrogen and Compressed Gases and Connecting Gas Regulators, register with PPMS for the Life Sciences Centre for Structural Biology, and attend a local training in the facility with the Facility Manager.    

Once you have completed the general training the facility manager can train you for autonomous use of the biophysics equipment (ITC, SEC MALS, CD), liquid handling robots (Mosquito and Dragonfly), and use of liquid nitrogen in the preparation of crystals for data collection at Diamond Light Source.

For data collection at Diamond light Source you will need to register with the User Administration System so you can be added to the Imperial College Block Allocation Group by the Facility Manager. More details about Diamond can be found in the Synchrotron pages of this website.    

The skills of the facility manager are also available to members of the college and interested external collaborators for all aspects of the structural biology pipeline from crystal condition screening to structure solution and refinement of macromolecular structures. Use of the facility manager is charged at an hourly rate, please contact Dr. Sam Horrell to discuss potential projects.

Local rules and risk assessments

These documents provide important information about the risks of working in the X-ray facility and about the safety features that are implemented. All documents are in pdf format.

• X-ray crystallography facility local rules
• Liquid nitrogen local rules
• X-rays risk assessment (work registration)
• Liquid nitrogen risk assessment