IceBear: Research Data Management
for Structural Biology

IceBear already knows everything about your crystals. Why should you have to type it all again when you ship them?

Assemble your shipment

Scan a dewar barcode and then scan pucks into the dewar. Scan pins into the puck. IceBear will build your shipment, including all the crystal information — no typing needed.

You can also import one or more filled dewars directly from the crystal fishing workbench.

If you have barcoded pins in storage canes, you can scan them directly into the puck.

Send your shipment

Other than your synchrotron username and password, you don't have to type anything. No copy-and-paste, and no downloading and uploading Excel spreadsheets. Just follow the prompts to choose key information such as lab contact and safety level, and hit Send.

IceBear validates the shipment and creates it directly in the synchrotron's IT systems. All your crystal information including space group, unit cell dimensions, etc., is transferred automatically.

Currently, IceBear supports direct shipment to Diamond Light Source, ESRF and MAX IV. Other synchrotrons running ISPyB will be added next. If your synchrotron is not supported yet, contact us to discuss your requirements.

Find your shipment - and your crystals

IceBear stores the remote URL of the shipment, so you can go directly from IceBear to the synchrotron's record of the shipment. Crystal URLs are also stored, so you can jump from IceBear's crystal page to the synchrotron's crystal page.

Ongoing work with the ISPyB consortium will enable IceBear to pass its own shipment and crystal URLs to the synchrotron, providing seamless back-and-forth navigation between home-lab and synchrotron systems.

Unpack your shipment

When your shipment comes back, it's easy to unpack your dewars. If some crystals were not used, you can easily unpack individual pins or whole pucks ready for re-shipment.

Hosted at CSC