At present, my work is developed in the Interdepartmental Service of Investigation (SIdI) of the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM). The SIdI depends directly on the Vicerrectorate of Research of the UAM. It is located in the C-9 module of the Faculty of Sciences and physically occupies the first and second plant of this module, next to three additional laboratories in the Faculty of Medicine.

    In the SIdI the great instrumental infrastructures for the investigation of the UAM have centralized, trying in this way to optimize the economic resources of the University. Before the existence of the SIdI, in the UAM the great equipment was obtained by means of projects of independent researcher. These equipment was gotten up in the structure of each department and was, in some cases, difficult of acceding to them on the part of other members of the university community. The purpose of the SIdI was to break with this dynamics and to centralize this type of infrastructures in “an interdepartmental” department, or what is the same, at the disposal of all the members of the university community. Of this form, it was possible to be acceded to the acquisition of great equipment that of another form, due to its high economic cost, would have been impossible. With this primary directive the SIdI was inaugurated in 1992. Those that we have lived its birth, growth and maturity in these 15 years of existence, we have seen happen to all type of investigators through: archeologists, biologists, biochemists, agronomists, chemist, physicists, lawyers, individuals, privated companies, other universities of all Spain and foreing… , everything an abundance of so different people, but simultaneously so seemed, that they have turned to the SIdI into a center of reference to national level. The recognition has been obtained, by the work day to day of each and every one of the professionals who constituted and at the moment we constituted the SIdI in our work of support, advising, collaboration and capacity of implication in the problems of each one of the researchers whom they require of our services

    The best virtue of the SIdI is the human factor, without doubt. Generally the work atmosphere is suitable to allow the interrelation between the laboratories constitute that it. This is possible because each we know our parcels responsibility and we respected those of the others. This way the communication between each one of the People in charge, allows to solve complex problems that, normally, cannot solved by a unique laboratory. Generally, in cases than in others, all we more know the foundations and capacities the technical presents in the SIdI, so that it is easy to advise to the usuary researchers on as they are the techniques of which we stipulate more suitable to solve its specific problems. In this sense, the SIdI “usually is idealized” on the part of the people who have a short perspective of time in their operation, since “apparently” the SIdI is “a utopian” place of comradeship, lack of rivalries and collisions between we constituted which it. This is certain only partly, since, as usually is normal, all that glitters is not gold. We are people and as such with the right to mistake us and to fight yet reason why we considered beneficial for us.


The different sections that constitute the SIdI are the following:

Director with Prof. Juan Carlos Rodríguez Úbis at the head

Administration and Reception with Chus to the front

Cleaning with Carmen like heart and creator of it  

Stable Isotope laboratory with Ramon Redondo to the front  

Laboratory of Mass spectrometry with Chuby and Maite to the front

Laboratory of Diffraction in Single crystal with Cesar to the front

Laboratory of Diffraction in Polycrystal with Noemí to the front

Laboratory of Diffraction in Cameras with me to the front

Laboratory of X-ray fluorescence by total reflection with me to the front

Laboratory of Ionic Chromatography with me to the front and the inestimable aid of Raquel

Laboratory of Plasma-Mass with Immaculada to the front

Laboratory of Organic Chromatography with Rosa to the front

Laboratory of Elemental Analysis and IR with Pascual to the front

Laboratory of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance with Ana to the front

Laboratory of Solid Nuclear Magnetic Resonance with Ajo to the front

Laboratory of Scanning Electronic Microscopy with Esperanza to the front

Laboratory of Electronic Microscopy of Transmission with Paco to the front

Laboratory of Confocal Microscopy with Mª Dolores to the front

    It is clear that most important of the SIdI it is the personnel that formed it. In this type of facilities the human factor is the most important because the advanced instrumental equipment, against which much people suppose, does not work only. What I mean it is that to secure the maximum yield of the instrumentations,  it requires a very important personal implication degree and that factor is a more or less constant between the Technical People in charge who formed the SIdI. The position of teaching that we realized year after year with the great number of scholarship holders who comprise of the personnel of the SIdI, concentrates, among others many things, in being able to delude them and transmitting those desire to them to simply deepen in the secrets of the techniques and not to be cheap manpower. Lately, perhaps due to the great number of new incorporations, this perspective is being diluted and the ideas of a principle become right what it was not tried.

    At the end of 2004 the SIdI, and the professionals that formed part of it, have left referenced in the monographic one that the magazine Scientific American has realized on the institutions of Investigation of Madrid. It is a very indirect way, but it burnishes, to see that the investigation work is clear to us that we carried out day to day in the Spanish scientific community.

 

After a long period of intense work, mainly bureaucratic, we have obtained “politically wished” accreditation ISO 9001. My opinion on the matter always has been the same; it is not possible to be tried to protocolise the investigation since this implies a lost one of remarkable scientific effectiveness. But thus that are the airs that run and it is not necessary to forget that behind the fact in himself is the money that will go preferably are centers that are credited or on the way to it. It is difficult to go against the winds that blow strong since they generate tensions in the boat that can get to produce the breakdown of some cord, when not of some mast. On the other hand, this subject of accreditation ISO 9001 has been translated in an increase of red tape and bureaucracy, that do of the somewhat monotonous and slow work and that implies on effort for the SIdI personnel very remarkable. But in short, already we are ISO9001 scientist.

@ RFR.  Last Update sábado, 17 de mayo de 2008