Facilities

I. Department of Chemistry Facilities

- 400 MHz Bruker Avance and 500 MHz JEOL ECA multinuclear (1H, 13C, 31P, 29Si, 19F) NMR spectrometers (used for characterization of products)
- Two Nicolet FT-IR spectrometers (used for characterization of products)
- Perkin-Elmer and Ocean Optics UV/Vis spectrometers (used to measure optical absorptions of products)
- Hitachi F-7000 fluorescence spectrophotometer (used to measure excitation and emission spectra of fluorescent materials)
- Agilent Technologies 6850 Series II GC-MS (used for characterization of liquid mixtures of products)
- Thermo-Finnigan LCQ Advantage LC-MS (used for the separation and molecular ion analysis of product mixtures)
- Bruker APEX X-Ray diFfractometer system with CCD area detector (used to determine crystal structures of any crystalline products)
- TA Instruments Model 2960 Thermogravimetric Analyzer (TGA) and Model 2010 Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC) equipped with low temperature cooling accessory (used to measure weight loss and thermal fluctuations over wide temperature ranges, especially for polymers)
- CE Elantech Thermo-Finnigan Flash 1112 CHN elemental analyzer (for combustion elemental analysis)
- Cyclic voltammetry equipment for determination of redox potentials, related to studies of polymer degradation in reducing environments

II. Computational chemistry labs
Teaching: Newly renovated computer lab with 10 student IMacs + 1 instructor IMac.
Research: The computational and theoretical chemistry group (CATCO, http://smu.edu/catco/) is equipped with a new symmetric multiprocessing and shared memory computer cluster. The resources of individual nodes are combined via an aggregated virtual machine that allows a single operating system instance to run above the discrete machines comprising the cluster.

Total:
Nodes 16
CPU's 32
Cores 128
Simultaneous Threads 256
Memory 768 GB
Hard Drive Capacity 16 TB

Per Node:
CPU's 2
Cores 8
Simultaneous Threads 16
Memory 48 GB
Hard Drive Capacity 1 TB
Network Interconnects 32 Gbit/s

In addition time is available on SMU's High-Performance Computing Facilities, which currently consist of 123 worker nodes, each with 2 quad-core Intel Xeon 2.53 GHz processors (984 total), 48 GB of memory, and 250 GB of local disk space, 16 of the above nodes are connected with an Infiniband high-speed network, for MPI-based parallel processing jobs, 2 high-memory data analysis and shared-memory parallel nodes, each with 2 quad-core Intel Xeon 2.66 GHz processors, 144 GB of RAM, and 3 TB of local disk space, 1 GPU computing node, with 2 quad-core Intel Xeon 2.26 GHz processors and 2 NVIDIA GTX 295 cards (each with 960 GPU cores and 3585 MB RAM).

III. Synthetic organic labs
- CEM Microwave reactor
- CEM Cool Mate
- Drybox (for work with air-sensitive reaction intermediates)
- Centrifuges
- UV/Vis spectrometer for characterization and kinetic measurements (e.g., enzyme kinetics)
The synthetic labs are have all the necessary glassware and common lab equipment needed for synthesis of complex organic molecules (from milligram to multi-gram quantities) and for purification.

IV. Polymer synthetic labs
- Microwave reactor used for synthesis of polymeric materials
- Gas chromatograph for following reaction progress
- Organic and aqueous gel permeation chromatographs (GPC) for analysis of molecular weight and molecular weight distribution of polymers with refractive index detector or with additional triple detection. The GPCs allow for studying polymer degradation.
- UV/Vis/NIR spectrometer with precise temperature control for studying kinetics of reactions, including polymer degradation and drug release. Additional UV/Vis spectrometer with temperature control.
- ATP-FTIR spectrophotometer with in situ ATR capabilities.
- Dynamic light scattering for measuring particle or polymeric aggregate sizes useful for studying degradation of polymers.
- Optical microscope equipped with a video camera useful for observation of larger polymeric particles (> 300 nm), their degradation and release of incorporated compounds.
- Equipment for freeze-drying used for polymer purification.
In addition, the polymer synthesis labs are equipped with vacuum lines, freeze-drying equipment, and other more conventional equipment needed for the synthesis and purification of polymers and polymer-drug or polymer-targeting molecule conjugates.

V . Department of Biology
- PTI Quantamaster 40 Spectrofluorometer
- plate-reading fluorimeter 
- gel-documentation system
- laminar flow hoods
- CO2 incubators
- Shaker incubators
- Incubators
- Bruker ESR spectrophotometer
- High speed centrifuges
- Ultra centrifuges
- UV spectrophotometers
- UV plate readers
- Beckman Gold HPLC with diode array detector
- Beckman DU800 UV/VIS spectrophotometer
- Nikon TE2000-E/C1 confocal-imaging system with two He-Ne lasers and 488nm Argon laser
- Nikon upright fluorescence-microscope with DIC optics
- Becton Dickinson FACSCaliber flow-cytometer
- Corbett RG-3000 real-time qPCR instrument
- Microm HM505E cryomicrotome, 
- shared-use tissue/cell culture areas with humidified 37 degree CO2 incubators 
- Class II biological safety cabinets, 
- controlled temperature 4 degree rooms, 
- -80 degree freezers with CO2 backup systems, 
- darkrooms for imaging and quantification of nucleic acids and proteins,
- automatic autoclaves 
- dishwashers
- dry ovens 
- media preparation areas
- Agilent 7820 GC-MS for metabolic profiling