SUNY Eye Institute Core Overview

The SUNY Eye Institute (SEI) plans to fully implement an array of services and research expertise in several SEI cores to National Eye Institute (NEI)-funded investigators, as well as to others with funds from federal, state, and other sources as they become available. One goal of each SEI core is to promote and foster collaborative science among investigators, as well as to develop the research potential of new vision researchers.  Therefore, module services are available to NEI-funded investigators and, with reduced priority, to non-NEI funded investigators to develop pilot studies on vision research targeted toward the submission of new grant applications.

The SEI actively funds pilot projects via institutional funds.  The services and training available from SEI cores are made known within SEI and our component institutions via this website and are also available to SEI members via subscription to our list serve.

Core services are connected to remote users via web conferencing and can be requested via the SEI website at www.sunyeye.org.

Briefly, the core modules fill three scientific needs:

1. Provision of unique equipment and expertise in specialized protocols not available in the laboratories of individual investigators. Examples are the production of transgenic mice, live animal imaging, immunogold-EM, bioinformatics, and morphometric computing support.
2. Undertaking procedures that various investigators require only periodically, but are nonetheless essential for their work.  Methods that are used infrequently in an individual laboratory are not only handled inefficiently but generate low quality data.  In a core lab, such work is done daily, and, we believe, with better consistency and quality. Examples are ERG recording, proteomic analysis, and EM.
3. Cost effective sharing of resources to minimize PI expense and maximize productivity. Examples are the computing support found in the bioinformatics module and the imaging module.

These services are available through three cores: (1) Bioanalytics & Bioinformatics; (2) Imaging & Structural Analysis; (3) Transgenics.  The facilities within each core, as well as procedures for core access, are described on their respective web pages.