• Before starting to work at the IMCES you have to register with our facility. To do so, please use this form. Note that this form will not be editable online with the Firefox pdf viewer (this is a limitation in FF). In order to edit this form online please open with IE or Google Chrome or download and edit in the Acrobat Reader.
• To keep an overview about the active people at the IMCES, every new user has to submit an own registration form.
• At the Electron Microscopy Unit (EMU) of the IMCES we keep track of every single project which you are working on. Therefore, registration processes for the EMU sligthly differ and are explained in the respective chapter, below.
• If your work will include handling of living organisms belonging to biosafety level 1 or 2, genetically modified or not, please indicate that in the application form and strictly follow the respective IMCES rules which you find in the chapter, below.
• If you wish to work with mice at the IMCES please download and fill-out the IMCES application form for mouse work which can be found here.
• We request to receive all necessary application forms as signed and scanned digital copy via email, before you start your first activities at the IMCES.
• For safety reasons, the entrance of the MFZ building, as well as the individual corridors leading to the IMCES laboratories, and the entry doors to the laboratories are generally locked. For non-assisted IMCES usage you therefore need a transponder key to enter the relevant IMCES areas. We will arrange the transponder registration for you after you have had an official instruction on the instruments.

At the IMCES we use an online booking tool to make machine reservations for everyone as convenient as possible. Additionally, this booking system builds the basis for our automated billing processes.

Every new user of the IMCES has to register her-/himself with that system: Online Booking System

• Most of the IMCES laboratory areas are approved for work with potentially genetically modified micoorganisms of BSL1 and 2. If you are planning to work with such active, non-fixed organisms at the IMCES you first of all have to submit our IMCES Biosafety Application Form.
• For BSL2 work at the IMCES you additionally must inform the "Gentechnische Genehmigungsbehörde der Bezirksregierung Düsseldorf" about your intentions. To do so, the safety officer for genetic engeneering of the UK Essen (currently Dr. U. Stank-Plucas) has to officially apply at the "Bezirksregierung Düsseldorf" for shifting parts of your BSL2 work from your approved BSL2 facility to the IMCES BSL2 facility. If this is applicable to your planned IMCES usage please contact the saftey officer well before you want to start with the BSL2 work.
• If you are already a registered user of the IMCES and you would like to perform BSL2 work which you haven't registered, yet, please keep in mind that you then must inform us and the "Genehmigungsbehörde" about your intentions (see above). You are not allowed to perform BSL2 work at the IMCES which has not been officially approved by both institutions!
• All IMCES BSL2 project leaders are not in charge of monitoring your BSL2 work and the obligatory documentation of your daily work. Through our online booking system we are able to monitor the instrument usage for official BSLS2 work and to identify the responsible users. In case of any project-related question by the "Bezirksregierung" we will forward the officers to the individual user and the responsible project leader of her/his BSL2 facility.
• To additionally record your BSL2 activities we ask all users handling BSL2 material inside the IMCES laboratories to fill-out respective forms which you find inside the relevant laboratories, on a daily basis.

• For EMU usage, every active user has to first register her-/himself at the IMCES using this form.
• Different from the LMU the EMU also requests to register every single project for which EMU services are requested. For that, the EMU provides individual project numbers to keep track of a) the registered people, b) the final image results, c) the processed samples and d) the BSL2 work. So please contact us before applying for a new project to receive an individual project number. In case of just adding people to an already registered project, please use the project number provided initially by the EMU.
• As explained above, all new EMU users then have to register with our Online Booking System.
• If you apply for non-assited usage of an EMU instrument, you will then receive a detailed instrument training from our application specialists after which you will be allowed to book and use the particular system on your own. 
• As a non-assisted user you are free to temporarily store your image data on our acquisition computers. However, we ask you to transfer this picture material as soon as possible to your own storage destinations. All image data on the acquisition computers are not mirrored and therefore cannot be regarded as safely stored. For transfer to your own computers we offer our sciebo project cloud. Just contact us for details. After 1 month we expect your data to be transfered to a safe destination so that it can be deleted without further notice.
• If you would like to use full (=assisted) services of the EMU, such as processing samples for EM analyses, we first of all ask you to contact us with your experimental ides and plans as early as possible to clarify details and appointments. Usually, the IMCES staff and machinery is fully booked, weeks in advance.
• On the day of sample delivery for assisted services we ask you to parallely submit our "Sample Declaration Form" which can be found here. Just the combination of individual project number and the information of the sample declaration form allows us to safely store the final data and also the processed samples, which are usually stable for several years if subsequent analyses might arise.
• For EM image acquisition we usually ask our assisted users to join the session in front of the EM as this is in our opinion the most efficient way of capturing specific image material.
• For fully assisted users we care for the entry of the particular service(s) into our booking system after you have finalized the registration with that online scheduler, yourself. With our invoices you will receive a monthly overview about what we have put into the scheduler for you.