The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has been a leader in science and engineering research for more than 70 years. The BioImaging Group (BIG) develops new optical microscopy, imaging and image analysis methods applied to biological research. BIG collaborates extensively with researchers within the Life Sciences Division at Berkeley Lab and outside. In addition to conducting a number of internal research projects, BIG provides access to high-end microscopy equipment for the entire Berkeley Lab life sciences community.

Researchers

• 3 PIs
  
• 7 other researchers
  
• Post-doctoral and other researchers

Instruments

• Zeiss LSM 510 NLO/META 2-photon microscope
  
• Zeiss LSM 410 UV confocal microscope
  
• Solamere spinning disk live cell microscope
  
• A scanning 2D/3D reconstruction microscope
  
• An automated high accuracy stage scanning inverted microscope
  
• Assorted developmental microscopes

Datatypes and volume
• ICS, LSM & TIFF
  
• 20-40 GB per week

Servers / Workstations

• Dell 2.8 GHz, running Red Hat Linux
  
• Sun Ultra 10 440 GHz, running Solaris
  
• 2 TB RAID storage
  
• Wintel PCs (98, 2000, XP) attached to each instrument

BIG is implementing Biotrue CDMS to accomplish three critical goals: (1) streamline data capture and increase instrument productivity; (2) enhance data management and retrieval; and (3) facilitate data access and collaboration. By automating the capture and management of data generated by the researchers, BIG gains significant productivity, reducing or eliminating associated administration overhead (e.g., copying, transferring files, burning CDs). At the same time, CDMS will significantly enhance the ability of scientists to find, retrieve and share critical research data. CDMS will also improve BIG’s provision of microscopy services for the Life Sciences Division, facilitating distribution of experimental results and collaboration via simple and secure web-based data access and sharing.