Incentivizing Collaboration with Core Facilities: Developing an Impactful Core Facility Voucher Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine

Core facilities provide essential institutional infrastructure for answering a broad variety of technical research questions. Funding pilot programs through a core facility voucher system provides opportunities not only for researchers to collaborate with core facilities to further their research aims and produce scholarly output, but also for core directors to gain new long-term customers, develop new pipelines, and bring new services and assays into the core’s portfolio. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine manages a core voucher program unique in several regards, including its requirement for a core consultation to ensure all proposals meet core facility standards for rigor and reproducibility, as well as its accessibility to trainees. The operational parameters and return on investment of this core voucher program are described and discussed.