National and Polar Laboratories Center (NPLC)
At present, Payame Noor University (PNU) has laboratories and workshops in 374 centers and units to provide educational services to university students. In this laboratories, there are about 60,000 items in the form of thousands types of laboratory and workshop equipment, which about 600 are high tech instruments. National and Polar Laboratories Center (NPLC), as one of the sub-departments of the Vice Chancellor for Technology and Research, in order to implement and promote the goals of the university for quality development, expansion of basic and applied research, and standardization of laboratories and workshops, creates a network of University laboratories and workshops. The NPLC currently has 31 laboratory and workshop technical committees located in 31 provinces of the country.
The network of PNU laboratories
Due to the variety of laboratory and workshop equipments and their extent in the country, the NPLC of Payame Noor University set up a network of university laboratories, called SHAPNA. Activation of SHAPNA and the launch of its internet webpage (shapna.pnu.ac.ir), the university has been able to achieve its desired goals, which are to save time, costs and make better use of existing instruments. This system was started with the aim of identifying and organizing existing laboratory equipments, managing information flow in laboratories and covering the laboratory needs of centers. Updated knowledge of the existing equipment, identification of laboratory spaces, support and maintenance processes are other goals of this system.
The goals of SHAPNA is the following:
• Maximum utilization of laboratory capacities, resources and capabilities, and their optimal economic utilization
• Design and implementation of intelligent management
• Qualitative growth of the university, and eliminating unnecessary expenses
• Basic information management of laboratories (equipment, requirements, laboratory and workshop spaces, and standards)
• Identifying advanced equipment in centers
• Providing the optimized conditions to access the network of national laboratories of Payame Noor University and informing faculty members and graduate students
• Enabling network laboratories to be evaluated and ranked for balanced development
• Ability to establish international collaborations in the field of laboratory services
• Management of maintenance, repair and calibration of devices
• Communication with faculty members, students and laboratory staff
• Introducing the capabilities of laboratories and their services
Another important goal of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Technology of Payame Noor University and NPLC is to make optimal use of the surplus capacities to provide services to researchers or institutions outside.
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