Volume 6-Winter 1999

Negotiating For...Equipment

Bjorn R. Olsen, M.D., Ph.D.
Hersey Professor of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School
Harvard-Forsyth Professor and Chair of Oral Biology
Harvard School of Dental Medicine

What excitement! As a postdoctoral fellow you have been offered an independent position as a junior faculty member. You are in the middle of negotiating for funding and space and you are starting to list equipment that you would like to put into that space. Or you are a junior member of the faculty moving to another institution. Finally, you see the possibility of filling your new laboratory with equipment that for a long time has been on your wish list. The excitement of looking through colorful catalogues is usually quickly replaced by a more sobering sense of reality as quotations arrive and you make plans to stretch the available funding as far as possible. Soon you must ask questions, such as: What are the basic pieces of equipment needed to run the lab? Do future projects require specialized equipment? To what extent is such equipment available in the new location as part of shared resources? What equipment, if any, can I move from my present position? What has to be purchased?

If essential equipment (instruments costing more than $5,000) can be moved with you, funding available in the new location can be used instead for hiring a technician or supporting a student/postdoctoral fellow. Before you proceed to list equipment you plan to take with you, however, make sure you clearly understand who has the title of ownership to that equipment and what steps you must take to obtain official permission to take it with you.

Step 1 - Address The Question Of Ownership
Except for equipment purchased with funding from special sources such as Howard Hughes Medical Institute, your current institution owns the title to equipment you are now using. Even if it was purchased by you with federal funding coming from a grant where you are the Principal Investigator, the equipment is owned by the institution. In fact, an NIH grant conceived by you, written by you and successfully recommended for funding by a Study Section, is awarded to the institution and not you. Therefore, if the institution (your Chairman) decides to replace you as the Principal Investigator and continue the research project, and that case can be effectively argued with the NIH, you may not be able to move the grant or the equipment for the project. Usually, this does not happen, however, and both grants and equipment can be moved with the proper planning and negotiating.

Step 2 - Assess Your Equipment Utilization And Needs Before you discuss your wishes with the laboratory director or Chairperson consider your equipment needs very carefully. Is your new project moving your research in a very different direction or is it extending current studies? Will pieces of equipment (microscopes, cryostats, centrifuges) you now depend on continue to be the work horses in your new laboratory? To what extent is equipment you now use shared by other investigators? Be realistic in assessing current usage and future needs. Consider what negative effects moving equipment with you will have on the continued work in the laboratory you are leaving. Be flexible. Do you have an existing grant that provided money for equipment? Is there equipment you obtained funding for but are not really using? Could it be left behind in exchange for moving another piece you need much more?

Step 3 - Discuss Your Plans With The Laboratory Director/Chairperson And Funding Agency
Once you have made your own realistic wish list, discuss it with your laboratory director or Chairperson. Should the laboratory director be reluctant to let you move anything, talk to your Chairperson. Also, if you plan to move a grant you need to discuss this with the institutional grants office and your funding agency; include equipment funded by that grant as part of the discussion. Be specific in your requests. List all equipment with the appropriate property bar code numbers so that it is easy to trace their purchase and service histories. Include also small pieces that are not inventoried and tagged by the institution.

Your laboratory director and Chairperson are interested in your success and will most likely support many of your requests with the blessing of the agency funding your research. At the same time, consider the need to arrive at a mutually beneficial arrangement. Avoid confrontation. If in the end you have to leave equipment behind that was purchased with "your" grant money, consider it your contribution to the continued success of the laboratory and department that provided the environment for an important part of your development as a scientist.