May 8, 2026
Hello Everyone,
Thank you for registering for this week's Lab Operations Software Discussion on "What's Your Big Number?" led by Rafael Toro with the Medical College of Wisconsin.
The recording and summary are available below. The presentation is linked here: 
Big Number May 2026.pdf
These will also be posted to the Workshops/Webinars page of the ABRF web site.
Contact us if you have questions or suggestions for future topics.
Meeting assets for ABRF Lab Operations Management Software Discussions are ready! Meeting summary Quick recap The meeting focused on Rafael's presentation about calculating and tracking funding for core research facilities at Medical College of Wisconsin. Rafael shared how his team developed a dashboard to measure approximately $360 million in grant funding used across 33 cores in fiscal year 2024, involving collaboration with the business intelligence team to automate data collection from Oracle to Workday systems. The discussion included questions about dashboard functionality, threshold settings for meaningful grant amounts, and challenges in tracking long-term impacts like mouse line generation. Participants also discussed potential future enhancements to the system, including equipment/service line analysis and publication tracking capabilities. Summary ABRF Updates and Research Impact Ken and Megan welcomed participants to the meeting and discussed upcoming ABRF updates, including the new mobile app and upcoming events. They highlighted the importance of member engagement and participation in shaping future content and initiatives. The meeting was set to focus on Rafael's presentation about calculating and understanding the "big number" related to research impact at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Core Facility Funding Dashboard Project Rafael presented a project to track and measure the total funding used in core research facilities at Medical College of Wisconsin. The project, initiated by Janet Lam, aimed to quantify the value of core facilities by identifying approximately $360 million in grant awards used in fiscal year 2024 across 33 cores and 1,405 researchers. The team developed a dashboard using Qlik to visualize this data, though development was paused due to the institution's transition to Workday from Oracle. The dashboard currently runs on a quarterly schedule and requires manual data upload from iLab, though future API enhancements may enable automated updates. Core Facility Usage Data Review Rafael presented data on core facility usage, explaining his methodology for tracking grants and revenue through iLab, with some cores excluded due to difficulty in attributing specific usage. Ramiro suggested applying a threshold to focus on grants spending more than $1,000 annually and recommended rebranding the presentation to emphasize internal cores rather than iLab. The group discussed challenges in tracking long-term impacts of core services like transgenic mouse production, with Brian noting that while difficult to measure, research leadership should understand the value of such resources despite financial losses. |
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