Facilities and Equipment

The chemistry complex, which includes the Pearson and Michael Buildings, is in the midst of an exciting renewal project.  The first phase, which included the complete renovation of the Michael Research Building and the west wing of the Pearson Building, is now complete and includes three floors of state-of-the-art research laboratory space, centralized chemical storage and stockroom facilities, a newly-renovated physical chemistry teaching laboratory complex, and a multimedia electronic lecture auditorium.  Planning for stages two and three, which will result in the renovation of nearly all remaining teaching and research laboratory space in the Pearson Building, is currently underway.

The department houses first-rate instruments and facilities for modern chemical research. (View some of our Instruments) Instrumentation includes two high-field multinuclear NMR spectrometers (Bruker AVANCE 300 and AM 300), a JEOL scanning electron microscope with EDS capabilities, Nicolet and Mattson FTIR's, Hewlett Packard GC-MS and Bruker MALDI-TOF mass spectrometers, AA, AES, ICP, diode array UV-Vis and fluorescence spectrometers, several Digital Instruments scanning probe microscopes (STM, AFM), a wide variety of pulsed and CW laser systems for analytical and physical measurement, a variety of potentiostats for electrochemistry, and UHV surface analysis equipment (Auger, HREELS).  The department also maintains a variety of HPLC's, capillary GC's, and PC and Macintosh computers as well as a walk-in cold room, an in-house stockroom, professionally staffed electronics and machine shops, and a student machine shop.  Additional instrumentation, such as three NMR spectrometers (400 MHz, 500 MHz and soon a 600 MHz), are available at the nearby Tufts Medical School, and a variety of instruments for the preparation and characterization of materials are available on campus at the Electro-Optics Technology Center.

Tufts University Academic Computing Services provides and supports a variety of computing services to faculty and students.  Additional computing resources are available on a variety of workstations available within the chemistry department.  An array of computing languages, and statistical, scientific and molecular modeling packages is available on these machines.  The Tufts high speed 1-GHz Ethernet system provides networking to the many computers and workstations located throughout the department as well as access through the T1 fiberoptic and vBNS to the Internet and the University's high speed computers.

The research interests of many of the faculty at Tufts are interdisciplinary, and numerous opportunities exist for collaborative research both within and outside of the university.  The Tufts medical, dental and veterinary schools, the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, and one of only two nutrition centers in the country are easily accessible.  The department encourages and supports collaborative research with other departments and institutions as well.  Examples include collaborations with pharmaceutical companies to find potent new anti-cancer agents, with physicists and engineers at the Electro-Optics Technology Center to develop new materials for “smart” electrochromic windows, with researchers at the Tufts Medical School to develop sensor technologies for an “artificial nose” that can be used to detect land mines or environmental monitoring, and with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to help pave the way for human exploration & development of space and help answer age old questions about life elsewhere in the Universe. Tufts long-standing tradition of supporting environmental research and collaborations between the Chemistry Department and the departments of Biology and Civil Engineering, as well as with Tufts Institute for the Environment, exemplify interdisciplinary environmental chemistry research at Tufts.  Tufts' proximity to a host of leading universities and industries fosters cooperation with researchers outside the university and provides convenient access to additional advanced research facilities.

The Tufts University libraries support the educational and research programs of the university through services to students, faculty, and staff. The principal library on the Medford/Somerville has recently undergone a major renovation and expansion that has nearly doubled its size. The new Tisch Library's resources consist of over 750,000 books, 300,000 government publications, 3,000 current periodicals and a growing collection of over 500 electronic databases and almost 2000 on-line journals accessible to the Tufts community via the Internet. Features and facilities include easily accessible open stack areas, seating for over twelve hundred, AV and computer-equipped classrooms connected to the university network, group study rooms, and computerized literature searching services. The Rockwell Reading Room in the chemistry complex is a branch of the Tisch library that provides Tufts chemists with in-house access to current issues of over 140 chemistry journals.  Tufts' affiliation with the Boston Library Consortium provides Tufts students and faculty with access to the resources of eleven additional academic and research libraries in the Boston area.  Department members also have free access to a host of on-line journals from the major publishers, and resources such as the CAS SciFinder Scholar, ISI ChemServer, Science Direct, Ovid, and the ISI Web of Science.