• Before starting to work at the IMCES you have to register with our facility. To do so, please use the Registration form you find in out Downloads section. Not every PDF viewer is suitable for digitally filling out the form. We recommend Microsoft Edge or Adobe Acrobat.
• To keep an overview about the active people at the IMCES, every new user has to submit an own registration form.
• At the Electron Microscopy Unit (EMU) of the IMCES we keep track of every single project which you are working on. Therefore, registration processes for the EMU slightly differ and are explained in a distinct section below.
• If your work will include handling of living organisms belonging to biosafety level 1 or 2, genetically modified or not, please indicate that in the application form and strictly follow the respective IMCES rules which you find in the section below. 
• If you wish to work with mice (or other live animals) at the IMCES please download and fill-out the IMCES application form for mouse work which can be found in the Downloads section.
• We request to receive all necessary application forms as signed and scanned digital copy via email, before you start your first activities at the IMCES.
• For safety reasons, the entrance of the MFZ building, as well as the individual corridors leading to the IMCES laboratories, and the entry doors to the laboratories are generally locked. For non-assisted IMCES usage you therefore need a transponder key to enter the relevant IMCES areas. We will arrange the transponder registration for you after you have had an official instruction on the instruments.

At the IMCES we use an online booking tool to make machine reservations for everyone as convenient as possible. Additionally, this booking system builds the basis for our automated billing processes. 

You find the Scheduler tool behind this link: Online Booking System

All users of the Light Microscopy Unit, and many users of the Electron Microscopy Unit (EMU), get their own accounts within that system after registering as an IMCES user. Self-registration in the Scheduler is not possible. Wait until you are contacted by the admins. 

It is not allowed to use IMCES services via a collaborator’s/supervisor’s/etc. Scheduler account.

Due to different procedures within the EMU, some of their users do not require, and therefore do not receive, login credentials for the Scheduler.

• Most of the IMCES laboratory areas are approved for work with biological material of Biosafety Level (BSL) 1 and BSL2, both wildtype and genetically modified. If you are planning to work with active, i.e., non-fixed, organisms at the IMCES that are (1) genetically modified and/or (2) classified as BSL2, you first of all have to submit our IMCES Biosafety Application Form, which you find in the Downloads section. Active wildtype organisms of BSL1 and all kinds of fixed/inactivated material do not require an additional biosafety application. 
• For Biosafety Level 2 work at the IMCES (wildtype or genetically modified organisms) you additionally must inform the "Bezirksregierung Düsseldorf" about your intentions. To do so, the safety officer for genetic engineering of the UK Essen (currently Dr. N. Koll; phone: 723 3397; nora.koll@uk-essen.de) has to officially apply at the "Bezirksregierung Düsseldorf" for shifting parts of your BSL2 work from your approved BSL2 facility to the IMCES BSL2 facility. If this is applicable to your planned IMCES usage please contact the saftey officer well before you want to start with the BSL2 work. She will also help you identifying the correct department at the “Bezirksregierung”, responsible for your type of BSL2 work.
  
• If you are already a registered user of the IMCES and you would like to perform BSL2 work which you haven't registered, yet, please keep in mind that you then must inform us and the "Genehmigungsbehörde" about your intentions (see above). You are not allowed to perform Bisafety Level 2 work at the IMCES which has not been officially approved by both institutions!
• The BSL2 project leaders of IMCES are not in charge of monitoring your BSL2 work and the obligatory documentation of your daily work. This remains the responsibility of BSL2 project leaders in the user’s host laboratory! Through our online booking system we are able to monitor the instrument usage for official BSLS2 work and to identify the responsible users. In case of any project-related question by the "Bezirksregierung", we will forward the officers to the individual user and the responsible project leader of her/his BSL2 facility.
• To additionally record your BSL2 activities we ask all users handling BSL2 material inside the IMCES laboratories to fill-out respective forms which you find inside the relevant laboratories, on a daily basis.

• For EMU usage, every active user has to first register her-/himself at the IMCES using the Registration form you find in out Downloads section.
• Different from the LMU the EMU also requests to register every single project for which EMU services are requested. For that, the EMU provides individual project numbers to keep track of a) the registered people, b) the final image results, c) the processed samples and d) the BSL2 work. So please contact us before applying for a new project to receive an individual project number. In case of just adding people to an already registered project, please use the project number provided initially by the EMU.
• If you apply for non-assisted usage of an EMU instrument, you will then receive a detailed instrument training from our application specialists after which you will be allowed to book and use the particular system on your own. 
• As a non-assisted user you are free to temporarily store your image data on our acquisition computers. However, we ask you to transfer this picture material as soon as possible to your own storage destinations. All image data on the acquisition computers are not mirrored and therefore cannot be regarded as safely stored. For transfer to your own computers we offer our Sciebo project cloud. Contact us for details. After 1 month we expect your data to be transferred to a safe destination so that it can be deleted without further notice.
• If you would like to use full (=assisted) services of the EMU, such as processing samples for EM analyses, we first of all ask you to contact us with your experimental ides and plans as early as possible to clarify details and appointments. Usually, the IMCES staff and machinery is fully booked, weeks in advance.
• On the day of sample delivery for assisted services we ask you to submit our "Sample Declaration Form" in parallel, which can be found in the Downloads section. Only the combination of individual project number and the information of the sample declaration form allows us to safely store the final data and the processed samples, which are usually stable for several years if subsequent analyses might arise.
• For EM image acquisition we usually ask our assisted users to join the session in front of the EM as this is in our opinion the most efficient way of capturing specific image material.
• For fully assisted users we care for the entry of the particular service(s) into our booking system after you have finalized the registration with that online scheduler, yourself. With our invoices you will receive a monthly overview about what we have put into the scheduler for you.