Hi all,

We have (again) been working in the background to get the procedures and environment at YNiC optimized to allow us to return to safe and effective data collection. We had few weeks of practice of running Covid -safe research scanning in Oct/Nov 2020, prior to the current lockdown, and have refined things further.

Although we are all aware things could change, we are working optimistically to the scheduled changes in national lockdown. We want to be as ready as we can be to start collecting data from April 12th to coincide with the proposed “Step 2” relaxation of lockdown rules that will allow us to scan colleagues, students and members of the general public again.

Over the next 4 weeks at YNiC we will dedicate most of our resources to 

1. Facilitate site visits to YNiC by researchers to see how things are going to work

2. Assisting existing projects to be technically set up so that they are ready to book and start testing from April 12th

3. Training / renewing training of operators to assist YNiC operators during scanning or even scan independently.

What do we need from you? - each lab should email us at support@ynic.york.ac.uk and let us know 

• what projects you have that are ready to run (or continue running from before) 

• which scanner you need

• what your training requirements are - for MRI, at least one of your team members who is routinely coming to the center during scanning should be a level 0 for example

Please bear in mind that we will be running masters projects this year also (as things stand) so the period of April through July will see particularly high demand on staff to run the scanners.

Also note that use of YNiC computing services will remain remote for now, and access (other than when scanning) is limited to staff who have allocated workspace at YNiC.

Thank you all for your help and patience. We look forward to seeing you all soon!