Research Facilities

The Department of Biomedical Engineering occupies 29,000 sq. ft. of space between the Traylor, Ross, and Broadway Research Buildings of the School of Medicine, as well as 34,500 sq. ft. of space in Clark Hall on the Homewood Campus.

In addition, the Smith Building houses the Translational Tissue Engineering Center (TTEC) (17,000 sq. ft.) with a focus on Ophthalmology and Materials Science and Engineering. This facility is used in the pursuit of independent and collaborative research efforts in that field.

Core Resources at the School of Medicine

Tissue Culture Labs

The department has two tissue culture rooms located in Ross S721 and Traylor 714. Each lab is equipped with biosafety needs and numerous cell-culture incubators. The facilities are shared among multiple laboratories. Several laboratories also have their own tissue culture facilities for dedicated tissue-engineering applications.

Microscope Facilities

A Nikon epifluorescence microscope is available in Ross 724B and is available to departmental members at large. The microscope is equipped with a CCD camera for digital imaging.

Also available for use is an Olympus Fluoview 300 laser-scanning confocal microscope. This microscope is equipped for simultaneous electrophysiological/patch-clamp recording and has custom lasers which allow for CFP/YFP FRET imaging.

Biochemical, Biophysical and Microfabrication

The department offers resources for biochemical and biophysical analysis, as well as for simple microfabrication. 

For biochemical and biophysical analysis, equipment includes a table-top ultracentrifuge; a floor-standing ultracentrifuge; floor-standing super-speed centrifuge; gel-imaging apparatus; and high-end spectrofluorometer.

A dedicated hood and oven for low-end microfabrication procedures is also available.   

Mechanical Instrument Shop

The Biomedical Engineering Department supports a mechanical instrument shop in Traylor 402, 403, 404 and 405. A machinist is available to provide design assistance and custom fabrication of devices for research and clinical projects.

The Traylor 405 machine room is dedicated for student use.

Translational Tissue Engineering Center

TTEC resources include two Applied Biosystems real time PCR’s, a conventional thermocycler, a BioDoc-It Gel Imaging System, Nanodrop 2000 spectrophotometer, Biotek Synergy 2 multi-mode microplate reader ,bacterial incubator and shaker needs for molecular biology.

For chemistry and biochemistry there are four large and five small fume hoods, an ABTX ECM-88 electroporator, a Waters Delta 600 HPLC with diode array and RI detector and fraction collector, a Waters Gel Permeation Chomotography System, a Nano Sight LM10 with high sensitivity camera,UV-VIS and plate reader, two lyophilizers and a Nanoparticle Characteration System.

For cell and tissue culture there are 9 Baker Biosafety cabinets, various incubators, centrifuges and microscopes, two liquid nitrogen storage freezers and several -80C freezers. There is also a Coulter counter Z2 and shared use of a Accuri C6 Flow Cytometer. Our microscope facility includes a Nikon TE200 with digital camera, a Zeiss Axio Observer Fluorescence Microscope with camera, and PC’s with Metamorph analysis software and a Zeiss Axiolmager A2 Upright  Microscope. There is also a shared Zeiss Confocal Microscope

Our mechanics testing equipment include a TA Instruments RFS 3 Rheometer and a Bose Endoura TEC ELF 3200 mechanical analyzer. We also have a histology room with a Leica Cryostat, a microtome, and paraffin embedding station and an animal surgery room with a gas anesthesia system, operating table, and Zeiss Stereomicroscope.

Core Resources at the Homewood Campus

Microfab Lab

The microfabrication laboratory in Clark Hall (rooms 115, 115A, 115B, 119, and 119A) and includes 1300 square feet of class 1000 clean-room space and equipment to facilitate research and education.

Various engineering courses use the facility to demonstrate and carry out some of the ideas and concepts that learned and formed in the classroom.

Research activities in the laboratory emphasize the use of modern fabrication technologies and tools for biological research in neuroscience, tissue engineering and molecular dynamics as well as in medical applications for novel therapeutics, artificial tissues, drug and gene delivery and MEMS microsensors.

The facility is managed by an experienced engineer who can train and/or get involved with any project that relates to microfabrication. 

Computing Machine Room

The Clark 315 data center is equipped with a dedicated 20-ton cooling unit and a 125kVA UPS for both conditioned power and battery backup. 

The facility houses research and administrative computing resources of various configurations:  120TB of data storage; three tape libraries with a backup capacity of over 210TB; 3 large memory computers 128GB memory/16core, 2 x 32GB/8core and Itanium cluster 64GB memory/16core. 

Administrative computing is composed of 8 Dell file and application servers, 2TB of storage and 1 additional tape library.

The department has 1 full-staff supporting general and administrative computing.

Cell and Tissue Engineering Resources

In addition to individual laboratory resources, the first floor of Clark Hall also offers fume hoods suitable for chemical synthesis, BakerSterilGARD II biosafety cabinets for tissue culture work, and stacked 2-compartment CO2 incubator for mammalian cell culture along with a Nikon T-100 inverted stage microscope with UV and camera, and an Allegra 25R table-top clinical centrifuge.

Major core equipment includes a BTX ECM-800 electroporator, a Waters Delta 600 HPLC with a diode array and RI detector and fraction collector, -80c freezers, a Millipore MilliQ water purification apparatus, a Nikon TE200 microscope with digital camera (DXM1200), PC, and MetaMorph analysis software,  a Stratagene Eagle Eye II with PC and camera, , a pH meter, a Bio-Rad thermocycler,  a Nexcelom Cellometer, a Thermo NanoDrop UV-VIS spectrophotometer and a Applied Biosciences Sequence Detector, model 7700. 

In addition, basic apparatus for molecular biology and chemical synthetic work including agarose gel electrophoresis equipment, a rotary evaporator, glassware for organic chemical synthesis, heating blocks and hot plates, stir plates, a platform rocker, water baths, balances, three microfuges, and a liquid nitrogen cell storage tank are available.