• GeneralLabHelp

General Lab Help

This page covers general lab help that is not already covered on other pages.
For subject protocol, please see Subject Methods.
For specific manuals for equipment, please see Manuals and Forms and Computing Environment and Equipment.

Lab Meetings

The AP Lab holds weekly meetings with a presentation usually facilitated by someone in the lab sharing their research progress. The PPT presentations are then uploaded onto the wiki for later review.

See Lab Meeting Schedule and Slides for details.

Purchasing & Reimbursement

There are several different kinds of purchasing for different situations. The most common ones are using the department’s P-card (with a general limit of $2500), a purchase order (to vendors that accept them), and SOLO (Supplier On Line Ordering, a.k.a. direct billing, for vendors with whom the University has an account).

Michele Schultz (mschultz@ur.rochester.edu) handles purchasing for the Center for Visual Science. If you need office supplies or anything else, talk to her.

If you need to order something for the lab from a vendor, be sure to tell Michele Schultz which financial source is paying for the order. Options include: Michele's grant, Martina's grant, one of their startups. If you don't know, ask someone (like the lab manager or Michele/Martina) before placing the order.

If you do need to purchase something with your own money, be sure to keep the original receipt and turn it over to Michele Schultz for reimbursement. She will provide further instructions.

Property Tags

Whenever the University purchases something of significant value/property, a property tag needs to be adhered to the item purchased so it can be tracked. In the event that the item is a computer part like a graphics card or a processor, the tag should be attached to the computer itself. Be sure to tell Sara Peterson (speter11@ur.rochester.edu) about the item’s location.

University Equipment Inventory Policy

Furniture

The university has a deal with specific furniture vendors; we get a variable but significant discount if we go through them.

The contacts are:

• Dan Dragone at Sedgwick Business Interiors, ddragone@sedgwickbusiness.com

• Chad Mucha at Workplace Interiors, cmucha@workplaceint.com

That being said, the furniture is still absurdly expensive. (They quoted the nice red-and-gray lab chairs at $575 each!) Purchasing gets cranky if we try to buy from anyone else without "justification", so if we want to order furniture from other places like Home Depot or anywhere else, we should take the following steps:

1. Contact one of the vendors above to get a quote. This is kind of a process, but we need the quote as justification to get Purchasing to reimburse us.
2. Once we have the quote, write a statement about why we would rather get the items anywhere else. Here's what I wrote for the chairs:

   • "The cost of one chair from Workplace Interiors would be enough to cover the purchase of three chairs from Home Depot. Therefore, we decided to save money and purchase them from Home Depot."

3. Make the purchase from whatever not-absurdly-priced vendor with a personal credit card.
4. Submit the receipt from the purchase, the quote from the other vendors, and that statement to Michele Schultz. Remember to tell her which account should pay for the purchase.

Travel

For conferences and university-related programs, the University will prepay travel costs (such as airfare) on an F2 (travel advance), if the trip is booked through the travel agency that the University contracts with.

A couple of points about this process:

• For employees, the ticket must be booked at least 21 days prior to the date of travel. For students, there is no such restriction due to the difference in how billing works.
• The prepaying can cover costs related to the travel mode itself (plane ticket, train ticket, bus ticket) but ONLY if said ticket is booked through the travel agency. All other costs need to be submitted for reimbursement when you return.

Reimbursement can happen if you have to book yourselves. As with other cases of reimbursement, be sure to hold on to the original receipts and talk to Michele Schultz when you return; she will help you fill out a travel reimbursement form.

APLab Wiki and Website Editing

For the wiki: when you want to make a new page, please check first to see if there is a similar one.

The website is http://aplab.bcs.rochester.edu. Natalya Shelchkova and Chelsea Marsh are working on overhauling it. If there are features or content that you would like to see, please add them to the Projects Google Doc.

APLab Skype Account

Lab Skype Account

Important Contacts

• Lab phone number: x5-6848

• Emergency: x5-3333

• Facilities: x3-4567, Service Requests link

• Michele Schultz (CVS Admin Assistant): x5-8659, Meliora Hall 361, mschultz@ur.rochester.edu

  • For: Questions about processes at the University; if ever Chelsea did not know something, M. Schultz was the one to go to

  • "Michele is the greatest resource you will have here. She is also the general administrative assistant for the entire department, which means that she has a lot of things on her plate. She understands that everyone is under pressure, but she also expects to be treated with respect. Respect her workload, and she'll be your best friend." -- CRM 10/17/18

• Debbie Shannon (CVS Admin): x5-6864, MC G-4105, dshannon@ur.rochester.edu

  • For: Questions about hiring, grants, budgets

  • "It's better to call Debbie than to email her, but be prepared for a very long explanation for whatever you ask. Her train of thought has many stops, and not all of them sound like they make sense, but they're all necessary for her to get to the point. Be patient and be polite, but don't be afraid to remind her of the focus of your question if she gets off on a tangent." -- CRM 10/17/18

• Chris Freemesser (BCS/CVS Systems Administrator): x5-0786, Meliora Hall 255, cfreemes@ur.rochester.edu

  • "All computer-related purchases need to go through Chris. Frame things as questions, not demands. It helps if you can tell him the problem that you're trying to solve too." -- CRM 10/17/18

• Marty Gira (Senior Research Engineer): x5-6658, MC 5-8508, martin_gira@urmc.rochester.edu

  • "Marty is a good guy, but he does work for several departments and only has one assistant in his shop, so his time is pretty heavily split." -- CRM 10/17/18

• Purchasing: x5-2002

  • The people who answer this number can tell you if the University has done business with a particular vendor before. You'll need to give the vendor's name, with spelling, and headquarters location.
  • For whether or not someone is qualified at all (regardless of the University's business history with them), you've got to call:

  • Vendor qualification (Chad): x5-2019

• Kathy Buckwell (IRB Specialist): x5-7446, kathleen_buckwell@urmc.rochester.edu

  • "It's better to call her than to email her, but either way try to keep it concise. Try to avoid emailing her multi-part questions. If you have to email her a question with multiple parts, put them on different lines (using numbers, bullet points, something). Even then there's still a pretty good chance that she will only answer one. Be prepared for more explanation than you think you need. Be patient and be polite." -- CRM 10/17/18

• Stacy Smith (Strong Memorial Hospital pharmacy): x5-2567, stacy_smith@urmc.rochester.edu

  • Can get us things like saline solution, eye anesthetic, cornea scratch solution, etc.

• Chad Mucha (Workplace Interiors): 585-425-7420 ext 233, cmucha@workplaceint.com

  • "Very nice man; helped furnish the lab when we first moved in." -- CRM 10/17/18