A new agreement between the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Zeiss has named the Core Facilities at IGB as an official Zeiss labs@location Partner. The model facility will allow researchers from around the U.S. to test-drive new instruments in the IGB's Core Facilities Microscopy Suite. This partnership represents the first North American location of the Zeiss labs@location partner program, already in use across Europe. Director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology Gene Robinson (left) with President of Carl Zeiss Microscopy LLC James Sharp. Courtesy of Kathryn Faith. The agreement will allow IGB and Illinois researchers access to select cutting edge technologies immediately following — or in some cases before — their broad release. New instruments, on loan from Zeiss, will cycle through the Core and be available to all users during that time. In addition, the agreement provides for training and classes taught by Zeiss personnel at the IGB that will better position Core staff and researchers to best utilize new equipment. Zeiss instrument specialists will provide instruction and instrument demos to Illinois and visiting scientists, as well as assist in training the IGB Core staff to provide similar instruction themselves. The Zeiss partnership hopes to establish itself as a regional center of excellence in biological imaging by attracting researchers from around the country to demo new instruments and attend trainings.