In the last decades new microfabrication technologies have been developed mostly at the service of Integrated Circuit industry, driven by the need of higher resolution and of novel functional materials. This expansion led to a growing application of microfabrication to other scientific fields, most noticeably in biology and medicine. With my work at MBI I am heading off in this direction, designing and producing microfabricated substrates and devices to be used in a large variety of biological applications. In this seminar I will give an overview of the core facility services and I will then discuss in more detail two specific example where the contribution of micro-fabrication technologies to biological sciences is fundamental: the soSPIM and the IR-live projects.