Computer facilities permeate the UCLA environment, from routine access to workstations by all students to the use of the most powerful vector and massively parallel supercomputers in the department facility at the UCLA Computing and Visualization Centers and around the country. Advanced visualization workstations are also available within the department, along with the UCLA visualization centers that house sophisticated color movie and slide-making facilities. In addition to a variety of workstations used in research groups, the department houses several major computational centers, the Laboratories for Theoretical Physical Chemistry; Organic and Inorganic Theory and Computation, the Structural Biology Computation Center and the facilities associated with the X-Ray Laboratory.

Advanced instrumentation plays a crucial role in modern innovative research in the molecular sciences. The UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry has been a leader in the establishment of instrumentation centers comprised of state-of-the-art equipment and skilled support personnel to assure successful operation of the centers. Complex instrumentation is made available to the research community through spectroscopic and molecular characterization facilities, which are committed to the training of all levels of research personnel in the operation of sophisticated instrumentation. The nature of these facilities evolves rapidly due to rapid improvements in modern chemical instrumentation. Major sources of support are the UCLA-DOE Biochemistry Instrumentation Center, the Magnetic Resonance Laboratories, the Pasarow Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, the James D. McCullough X-Ray Crystallography Laboratory, and the UCLA-Hughes Electronics Materials Characterization Facility.

The molecular life sciences community at UCLA has established a number of core facilities that greatly enhance the research pursuits of members of the Division of Biochemistry. These include oligonucleotide and peptide synthesis facilities, DNA and peptide sequencing services and facilities for media preparation, fermentation and tissue culture, confocal microscopy, and cryo-electron microscopy. The macromolecular structure group has world-class facilities for X-ray diffraction and multi-dimensional NIVIR analysis of DNA, RNA and proteins. In addition, the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry houses a first-rate Biochemistry Instrumentation facility, which includes instrumentation for digital autoradiographic and fluorescent imaging, analytical ultracentrifugation, HPLC, surface plasma resonance spectroscopy and microcalorimetry.

With the assistance of our excellent departmental shops and personnel, UCLA faculty and students have designed and built equipment that has defined the state-of-the-art in many fields. The department and Physical Sciences Division maintain and staff a glass shop, microelectronics shop, machine shop and well-stocked chemical and supplies storerooms, all open for student use. The UCLA Visualization Center is available for video, graphics, 3-D animation and imaging of scientific and mathematical models.

The UCLA Library has been ranked second among all research libraries in North America by the Association of Research Libraries. This high rating-exceeded only by the library at Harvard-was based on the size and quality of the UCLA collections and excellence of professional staff. The Chemistry Library, housed in Young Hall, has 71,000 bound volumes as well as some 750 serial titles in all fields of chemistry, biochemistry and molecular biology. Its collections of U.S. chemical patents as well as UCLA chemistry and biochemistry theses and dissertations are extensive. The Biomedical Library in the nearby Center for the Health Sciences has an exhaustive collection of books and journals pertaining to molecular life sciences.