Becoming a Self-User

Granting Self User Status

Users that are asked to be trained to use the machines at their own leisure without the help of a Flow Core staff member will have to undergo a few steps before they will be granted after-hours access and the ability to run on their own.

The user will have a registered iLabs account that is linked to a PID from their Principle investigator. This is the first step to start booking appointments and will be used for future appointments.

The user will email all of the Flow Core staff and inquire about training in order to receive the training videos that we will provide for them to watch prior to making their 3 training appointments.

Once the videos have been watched the user will setup 3 different appointments lasting 1 hour long as an assisted users reserving a staff calendar. Preferably on the same machine to cut down on any confusion that might come from using a different analyzer. These 3 appointments will be on separate days and within the same week.

The first training will be with a Flow Core staff member who will walk through the process from checking fluids before starting on the instrument to setting up and running a 4 color experiment with beads. It is recommended that the trainee brings a notepad to take notes to answer any questions that arise during the training. The staff member will go into every aspect of creating an experiment, creating/calculating compensation, and finally exporting the experiment to their respected folder on the backup drive.

The second training will be the user by themselves running the same experiment without duplicating data. They will be graded on setting up the experiment completely from scratch and if any questions or concerns arise a Staff member will be booked during this time to help. The user should be able to complete this process within the hour time allotted. If a user fails to do this in the time allotted due to machine instability or issues out of their control they will not be marked down for time.

Prior to the third training the trainee should inform a Staff member the type of samples they are looking to run. For example if your lab runs cell cycle and not many phenotyping experiments then the Staff member will provide more information on how to setup the experiment as there are other steps to complete in order to run cell cycle.

The third training will be the user completely on their own with samples that they have prepared. We like to keep it simple and ask our trainees to not bring a panel that is much more complex than they did for training as this will cause issues or confusion. The trainee will be left alone to run the experiment and if there are any questions a staff member will be available to assist.

After the third training is complete the user will be able to book experiments on iLabs but will still need to reserve a staff member to ensure they are capable of running on their own. Once a user has completed all three trainings and is deemed capable we will provide the trainee Self user status on iLabs.

Once the above has been completed we will grant the Self user access to the core after hours by adding them into the Schlange software via their UTHSCSA ID. We do not provide Pin numbers for users as the pin numbers have been shared in the past. The ID allows us to track who enters the lab at what time and if there are any machine malfunctions or issues we know who to talk to.