The Network of Infrastructures to Support Research and Technological Development (RIAIDT) is the organisational structure, dependent on the Vice-chancellor’s office for Scientific Policy, which integrates the instrumental infrastructures of common use that provide support services to research in the USC. The functional objective of the RIAIDT is to provide greater uniqueness and operability to the research support resources of the USC.
The tasks of RIAIDT are:
- To support the research of the research staff, research groups, departments, institutes, centres and services of the USC, as well as other public or private centres, within the framework of covenants, accords or agreements signed by the USC.
- To develop its own methodological research into the experimental techniques needed to improve and expand its services, in accordance with the guidelines of the USC's scientific policy.
- To advise the university community on all support services, as well as to disseminate its services.
- To contribute to the training of USC research staff in the techniques implemented in the RIAIDT units and areas so that they can make the most of the potential of the infrastructures available.
- To promote the creation of scientific-technological platforms for the provision of research support services, either mixed, with the participation of RIAIDT units together with USC research groups, or made up solely of USC research groups
The RIAIDT is developed from scientific-technological units and platforms.
The units are structures that bring together scientific-technological equipment and highly specialised personnel to provide a service to USC research staff and other researchers from public or private entities, and to deal with the development of new technologies linked to the research orientations of each unit.
Scientific-technological platforms are structures that arise from the knowledge and experience of one or more research groups in order to articulate a dual function: the provision of services in different and complementary areas of the RIAIDT units, and technological development or research linked to these services.
The platforms are created in those cases in which the groups have knowledge, technology or instrumentation that, added to those available in the RIAIDT, allow a significant improvement in the scope of the corresponding service, or in those cases in which it is possible to meet demands for services that cannot be addressed with the existing capacities in the RIAIDT.
The model of operation of the scientific-technological platforms within the framework of the RIAIDT is always based on a joint contribution of resources by the RIAIDT and the research group promoting the platform.