The Facilities Overview
Research and scholarship are products of trained minds, but they cannot
be carried out without suitable facilities. The University is constantly
expanding these vital tools of our trade and our facilities rival the most
advanced of any university in the country.
Instrumentation Laboratories - Computational
Facilities - Molecular Life Sciences - Shops
- Library
Instrumentation Laboratories
The UCLA Molecular Instrumentation Center
(www.mic.ucla.edu) (MIC) is a
campus-wide, state-of-the-art core facility that enables the use of modern
instrumentation in molecular characterizations. The purpose of the MIC is to
meet the needs of the UCLA scientific community by providing all aspects of
technical support in the application of modern instrumentation to solve
problems in cutting-edge scientific research. The UCLA Molecular
Instrumentation Center (MIC), managed through the Department of
Chemistry and Biochemistry, encompasses five major areas: Magnetic Resonance,
Mass Spectrometry, X-ray Diffraction, Materials Characterization, and
Proteomics and Biochemistry Instrumentation.
Computational Facilities
Computer facilities permeate the department, from routine access to
workstations by all students to the use of the most powerful vector and
massively parallel super-computers at UCLA and around the country through
the departmental network. 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 IBM, DEC, SUN, Hewlett-Packard, and SGI 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.
Molecular Life Sciences
The molecular life sciences community at UCLA has established a number
of core facilities that greatly enhance the research pursuits of the 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. In addition, the
macromolecular structure group has world-class facilities for X-ray diffraction
and multidimensional NMR analysis of DNA, RNA, and proteins.
Shops
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 maintains and staffs
a glass shop, electrical shop, and well-stocked chemical and supplies storerooms,
all open for student use.
Library
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 US. chemical patents as well as UCLA chemistry
theses and dissertations are extensive. The Biomedical Library in the nearby
Center for Health Sciences has an exhaustive collection of books and journals
pertaining to molecular life sciences.
Last Updated: Apr 2003
