Dear all,

Beth, myself, and all the YNiC staff are working hard to ensure YNiC is an open and inclusive environment to conduct amazing cognitive neuroscience research. Part of that is reviewing a lot of our current policies and making changes where we think it will help.

One current bottleneck for accessing the MRI scanner is the need for all "operator-covered", bookable slots to have two YNiC staff acting as operators. This severely limits the number of hours we can make available on the booking system. When YNiC provides both operators, groups do not need to provide an operator but many groups already have someone who is at least level 0 trained.  We are looking to get even more YNiC researchers trained up to reduce this bottleneck and thus make more "operator-covered" bookable slots available.

To increase bookable hours, we are moving to a system where YNiC ensures one YNiC staff as operator. This means, by default, you will be expected to provide one level 0 trained individual (usually the person running the study), to ensure we have at least one level 0 and one level 1 individual present at all scans (in line with existing policy). This will increase the number of operator-covered bookable hours per week from ~10 - ~16hours. Note, if your lab can provide at least a level 1 and level 0 operator, you are still able to book the MRI scanner outside of these hours.

We believe this shouldn't affect any projects that are currently running, but please get in touch if this is not the case. For future projects, you will be expected to provide a level 0 trained individual by default. If you cannot do this, then this shouldn't prevent you from scanning - get in contact with us and we can work something out. The only real change is we are moving from two YNiC staff by default (with exceptions when the researcher is level 0 trained) to one YNiC staff by default (with exceptions when the researcher isn't level 0 trained).

Finally, all supervisors of MSci projects that are about to start scanning will be emailed directly by a YNiC staff member to ask what support they need. Please respond to this email as soon as possible so that we can ensure these projects run as smoothly as possible.

I hope this change, and the rationale for making the change, are clear. Please get in contact with me and Beth if this is not the case, or you have specific concerns about how this change might impact your research.

Best wishes, Aidan