Facilities

Facilities for Research and Teaching

• State-of-the-art building. The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry occupies the new Ezra Taft Benson Science Building (completed in mid-1995). This 190,000-square-foot complex, constructed at a cost of over $30 million, consists of three wings that accommodate all of the research and teaching activities of the department. Engineered for the 21st century, it includes space for the research programs of 40 faculty and 168 research students, with specially designed laboratories for shared departmental equipment including high-field NMR, lasers, mass spectrometers, and molecular modeling. It also contains state-of-the-art teaching facilities for both undergraduate and graduate instruction, including fully networked computer teaching laboratories and lecture/seminar halls with built-in computer-controlled multimedia projection systems.
• Departmental instrumentation for modern research. Major instrumentation is department-maintained to support research and teaching. This currently includes three high-field superconducting NMR instruments (Varian INOVA 300 MHz, Varian INOVA 500 MHz and Varian NMRS 500 MHz; all with variable-temperature accessories, multinuclear capabilities and the latter two with pulsed-field gradients.); two high-resolution, double focusing mass spectrometers (Finnigan-MAT Model 8430 and JEOL Model SX102A); a QqToF mass spectrometer with interchangeable electrospray, nanospray, and MALDI ion sources; a QqToF mass spectrometer for proteomic analyses (applied Biosystems QSTAR Pulsar I ); and an X-ray diffractometer (Nicolet Model R3, with low-temperature accessory).
• Excellent shop, stockroom, and glassblowing facilities. The department operates fully equipped machine and electronic shops with rapid job turnaround. More specialized work can be done at the university instrument shop which has excellent facilities for computer-controlled machining, high-vacuum welding, etc. Most supplies needed for research are available directly from the computer-controlled inventory of the department stockroom. Glassblowing services are also available to facilitate construction or repair of special apparatus. The staff in each of these areas is excellent.
• Optical spectroscopy and laser equipment. Spectroscopic instrumentation in the department covers a wide range of wavelengths, from the infrared (Mattson Sirius 100-FT-IR, with a Spectra-Tech infrared microscope) through the visible and ultraviolet (Perkin Elmer Plasma II ICP Emission Spectrometer, Cary 118 UV-Visible Spectrophotometer), up to X-ray and gamma-ray (proton-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) and photon-induced gamma-ray emission (PIGE)). Laser equipment includes several excimer, YAG, nitrogen, stabilized diode, and dye systems. In addition, high-resolution monochromator, boxcar signal averager, and diode array detector equipment supports our spectroscopic research.
• Separations science. BYU boasts some of the world's finest facilities for chromatography, with numerous high-resolution chromatographs and capillary electrophoresis setups, including supercritical-fluid chromatographs that were largely developed in the department. These instruments are typically interfaced with specialized detectors, such as time-of-flight mass spectrometry for ultrafast, element-specific detection, and quadrupole mass spectrometry for molecular fingerprinting (Hewlett-Packard GC/MSD).
• Equipment for thermodynamic studies. BYU is recognized as a world leader in calorimetric measurements, with automated differential scanning and cryogenic adiabatic calorimeters available for heat capacity and phase transition studies. Instruments specially designed in the department for measuring the thermodynamic properties of solutions include numerous titration and flow systems that operate over wide ranges of temperature, pressure, and sample size.
• Biochemical and cancer research. A number of visible-and UV-absorbance spectrophotometers, several analytical and preparative ultracentrifuges, numerous incubators, high-performance liquid chromatographs, an automated fluorimeter (Perkin Elmer LS50), a DNA sequencer (Applied Biosystems 370A) and a DNA synthesizer (Applied Biosystems 381A) are dedicated to this work. A modern tissue culture facility and a recombinant DNA laboratory are also available. In addition, a Fourier transform mass spectrometer (Bruker APEX 47e) with both electrospray and matrix-assisted laser desorption (MALDI) ion sources is available for ultrahigh-mass resolution studies of peptides with molecular weights up to over 100,000 Daltons. The Department also houses the BYU Proteomics and Biological Mass Spectrometry Facility, with instrumentation for two-dimentional electrophoresis and peptide/protein mass analysis.
• Powerful networked computing. The department employs a specialist to maintain our Ethernet network, which ties together a variety of machines, including Silicon Graphics, Sun, and DEC workstations, as well as numerous Macintosh and DOS/Windows systems. The network also connects to External Linksupercomputing facilities, including an IBM 3090/180 and a CONVEX C220 and to the outside world via the Internet. A wide range of molecular modeling software is in use, including HyperChem on both personal computers and on powerful Unix workstations, QUANTA/CHARMm, SPARTAN, Gasusian, and GAMESS. Much of the workstation software can be operated remotely on the network using X-windows.
• Access to the literature. The university's 3-million-volume collection is housed in the Harold B. Lee Library, within a two-minute walk of the Benson Science building. The library subscribes to most major scientific journals and many specialized journals. Material not directly available on campus is easily obtained via interlibrary loan. From your own office or laboratory, the campus network allows convenient on-line searching of library holdings, CAS Online, STN, Current Contents, and other databases as well as a large number of journals online.