Central Analysis Service of the UPV/EHU. Alava Unit

The analytical problems arising in fields as diverse as Health Science, Biochemistry, the Environment, Food, Quality Control in numerous industries - and even those related to other less conventional fields such as Archaeology and the study and dating of works of art, etc. - would not be possible to solve today if it were not for the availability of modern instrumental techniques.

The contrasting fact of the matter is that some of the research groups from the UPV/EHU, who have a specific need for this kind of data, do not have the necessary scientific equipment at their disposal. This therefore makes it difficult for them to obtain suitable results.

On the other hand, the demand for and proliferation of analytical systems - some of which do not attain sufficient levels of use - on the part of research groups, greatly increases the costs of projects and places a burden on the research budgets of the UPV/EHU.

The creation of a General Analysis Service aims to alleviate some of these problems by above all favouring those groups that have little chance of obtaining funding to purchase the equipment they need, and by enabling consolidated groups to channel their efforts towards tasks which are not merely analytical in nature.

This will enable there to be an increase in the quality of experimental data pertaining to the aforementioned groups, while at the same time leading to the opening up of new lines of research - hitherto blocked owing to the lack of analytical instrumentation.

On the other hand, the existence of a service of this type will improve the provision of external services which some of the groups are currently offering to companies and institutions, and will even enable new resources to be obtained.