Building a strong foundation: experts share insights on research infrastructure challenges and opportunities

Each research infrastructure has its own specific needs, yet many challenges are common across the board. “When it comes to infrastructure requirements—such as space, politics, organization, management, and attitudes—ensuring sustainable funding can be particularly difficult, especially for laboratory facilities,” explains Mikko Finnilä, Academy Research Fellow at the Research Unit of Health Sciences and Technology. “Today physical infrastructures are being challenged and some would like to see everything digitalized and focus on developing virtual tools“, he continues.

The shortage of funding and staff is a true challenge for infrastructures. “There is a need for more support staff to research projects”, Tarja Tanner thinks. She is a Docent and specialist in cariology and currently working at the Unit of Population Health at the Faculty of Medicine and at the wellbeing services county of North Ostrobothnia, Pohde.

According to the researchers, it is easier to secure funding for seed investments than for long-term maintenance and staff salaries. They believe that this is only possible through active participation from both the university and the wider society.

Pia Nyberg, a Planning Manager at the Biobank Borealis of Northern Finland sees that the value of research, conducted by both academic and industry researchers, should be appreciated more, even - and especially - during these times when funding in the wellbeing services counties and academia is scarce. "The needs and views of researchers and research supporting infrastructures, such as biobanks, should also be heard and appreciated more during the legislative processes.“

Successful infrastructure is carefully planned, accessible and responds to the users’ needs

But what is the recipe for good infrastructure? “When planning functional infrastructure, a key element is a sufficient user base that can pool enough resources for functional infrastructure. The infrastructure itself plays a key role in resource demand. Operational simplicity can minimize the need for supporting staff while more complicated infrastructure requires more engineer time”, Mikko summarizes.

From Tarja’s perspective, cultural differences sometimes define what is considered successful. “For us Finns, and in Finland it is important that results are meaningful and valued. It was refreshing to find that in Norway, the process itself is meaningful and the results achieved are just a reward for a quality process. When there is no pressure to get a publishable result out in a short period of time, such freedom to go in an interesting direction, which is part of the researcher's job, can produce great results in the end.”

Pia has a clear view about Biobanks’ strengths: “First, although samples for research purposes have been collected throughout the history of medicine, in the biobank era, defined by the Biobank Act, the collected samples can be used for a variety of future research needs, not just for a defined specific research purpose as previously. Second, the research results are obliged to be returned to the biobank that further enriches its data set. An excellent example of this is the genomic data in biobanks, that was originally created by the Finngen-project. The data is now available for all the research community via biobanks. Finally, via the network of Finnish biobanks large enough sample sets, even for the studies for rare diseases, can be obtained. In the end, all of which can lead to more effective healthcare via better diagnostics and treatment strategies.”

What can be done to improve the infrastructure?

Finally, Mikko and Pia, who both manage infrastructure on our campus, were invited to share their ideas on how they could improve its functionality.

According to Mikko, his research is multidisciplinary, and he has noted that each discipline typically has its unique needs that should be considered in order to provide fair access and opportunities for different researchers. “I would like to be pragmatic and enable various types of work.” he concludes. The utilization rate of x-ray imaging facilities has been excellent, and they are looking for funding to increase throughput and image quality and allow more users in the future.

Pia found that Biobank is already in the process of improving the data lake and database capabilities of the university and central hospitals. “A lot of work still needs to be done, but it will be a big step for both biobanks and all types of medical researchers demanding the utilization of health care data”, she concludes.

Kontinkangas Campus Science Day 2024

In this blog, we have highlighted the themes from some of the key topics that will be featured in the 21st event of the Kontinkangas Campus Science Day, taking place on 16th October 2024, under the title: “Infrastructure enabling science”.

Ever since the first Science Day was organized, the day has been an inspiring platform for scientists to share their recent research findings, discuss daily topics and get to know each other. Importantly, the event provides an opportunity for students and early career researchers to present their projects and familiarize themselves with the research on campus.

Meet the interviewees:

Pia Nyberg is a biochemist with the title of Docent in tumor biology. She has worked over 10 years in the Biobank Borealis of Northern Finland, currently as a Planning Manager. Previously she has worked as a researcher at the University of Oulu, Faculty of Medicine as well as at Beth Israel Medical Center, Harvard Medical School. Pia has found collaboration between different organizations very important for research. "For example, in the Genome Health project, all the Finnish hospital biobanks joined forces with the Department of Clinical Genetics and examined the genotype analyses returned to the biobank from the FinnGen project. This enabled identifying biobank sample donors who, due to mutations in specific genes, are at an elevated risk of breast cancer and those individuals had the possibility to get genetic counselling in health care.”

Mikko Finnilä is currently working as an Academy Research Fellow in the Research Unit of Health Sciences and Technology. He is heading FinTomo-Research infrastructure providing high resolution 3D imaging with x-rays. He has experience from various research environments. During his master’s thesis, he moved to UK to learn nanomechanics in Cranfield University. Later, he spent time in Glasgow, Gloucestershire, Kuopio and Calgary. During his post doc, he started running more ambitious projects in synchrotrons. According to Mikko, the purpose of the infrastructure should serve the scientific community. ”This requires that instrumentation is aligned with the expertise and support.”

Tarja Tanner is a Docent and specialist in cariology and she is currently working at the Unit of Population Health at the Faculty of Medicine and at the wellbeing services county of North Ostrobothnia, Pohde. Tarja has been a visiting researcher at the Nordic biomaterials research centre, NIOM, on two occasions for a total of 10 months. In her current research, she utilizes data and sample collections of North Finland Birth Cohort but she also has experience in laboratory research environments. As a visiting researcher in Oslo, she found a very good and supportive infrastructure there. “I had access to the extensive facilities of the research laboratory and the support staff, who were almost always available.” She felt that it was helpful for her own research that all the equipment she needed for her own work was on the same floor. “That makes the threshold for using the equipment as low as possible.”

Text by Pirjo Åström and Virpi Harila