CLEMSON CORE FACILITIES

This National Science Foundation-supported engineering research center is home to a variety of optical microscopes, analytical IR, Raman and fluorescent spectrometers.

The CCIT provides both data and voice communication to the campus. CCIT is home to the Cyber Infrastructure Technology Integration group, which provides research cyber infrastructure resources and advanced research computing capabilities. This includes supporting researchers’ use of the Palmetto Cluster high performance computing environment, which is available at no cost to all Clemson students, faculty and staff as a dedicated research environment. The Palmetto cluster supercomputer is estimated to represent the sixth largest in the United States and is ranked 60th in the world.

Clemson’s Cooper Library provides access to 1.2 million print volumes, complemented by over 500,000 eBooks and more than 82,000 electronic journal subscriptions. Holdings are easily searched from the search box at the top of the library home page, and online holdings are available 24/7. Some older materials are stored in the Library Depot location in Clemson Research Park, retrievable upon request. Resource-sharing agreements are in place with South Carolina academic libraries through PASCAL, and other libraries through interlibrary loan, to facilitate access to material not held in the Cooper Library.

The EM facility is located a short distance from the main campus (3.5 miles north of Interstate 85 on state Route 187). It has several state-of-the-art high-resolution transmission electron microscopes, scanning electron microscopes and a combined focused-ion beam/SEM microscope. The microscopes have energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, electron backscatter diffraction, wavelength dispersive spectroscopy, sample manipulation and surface modification capabilities.

The CUGBF helps investigators use the latest genomics technologies in their research. In addition to offering a full-service genomics lab and bioinformatics team, the CUGBF offers training to students, postdocs and faculty to work alongside staff members to learn genomic and bioinformatic techniques. Outside of the lab, the facility offers training and informational workshops to Clemson’s diverse scientific community.

The GSRC is a centralized animal facility in close proximity to the Life Science Facility. The GSRC has 22,000 square feet dedicated to maintaining a variety of laboratory animal species used in research and teaching programs at Clemson University, and to providing resources and support services for those programs. GSRC is managed by the Office of Animal Services and provides facilities, equipment, caging, and veterinary and technical support to facilitate animal research and teaching programs. The GSRC has housing space for large and small laboratory animals, including two suites of individually ventilated isolation cubicles. Facilities and caging are available for housing laboratory rodents, rabbits, chickens, goats, swine and other species as required. Ventilated cage rack systems and micro-isolator cages are available for housing mice. All animal rooms have centrally controlled temperature, humidity, airflow, pressure differentials and lighting. Environmental parameters are monitored continuously using a computer-controlled monitoring system with dial-out alarms. Laboratory animals are procured from preapproved sources of specific pathogen-free animals. Research Services staff includes laboratory-animal-trained veterinarians and animal-care technicians. Animal-care staff provide seven-day-a-week animal care and health surveillance. The surgical facility has two large operating rooms, nursing station, sterile prep, recovery room, procedure and surgical prep room, and radiology. Anesthetic delivery and monitoring equipment are available for various animal species. Animals are maintained in accordance with all animal-welfare regulations and federal guidelines to ensure humane care. Clemson University animal research facilities and programs are registered by USDA and have received full accreditation from the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care, International. The Office of Animal Services strives to provide and promote the highest standards of animal care and the humane and responsible use of animals in the advancement of knowledge which will benefit the health and welfare of people and animals.

The LSF, completed in 2012, is a 100,000-square-foot building comprising three floors of state-of-the-art research space featuring 25 wall-less laboratories. Each laboratory has an interior 150-square-foot room with tissue-culture facilities. The shared laboratory space, multiple collaboration white board spaces and integrated conference rooms increase ease of interactions among all faculty, postdocs and students. The CUGBF and the Clemson Light Imaging Facility are located in this building, as are faculty participating in the EPIC COBRE. The biological sciences and genetics and biochemistry departments collectively supply secretarial services (four staff members), a budget center for grant account management, and engineering services (two staff members responsible for maintenance and repair of departmental and laboratory equipment).

The CLIF is a multi-user 2,642-square-foot core facility located in the Life Sciences Facility. It has a 742-square-foot preparatory area, a storage area, six instrumentation rooms and an image-analysis room. The imaging facility houses a number of advanced light microscopes, including a Leica SP8X Multiphoton spectral confocal microscope and a suite of Nikon microscopes. Additionally, the CLIF features cell-sorting equipment, a multi-user specimen-preparation laboratory and a dedicated classroom, which seats 20 people. The specimen-preparation area houses all the equipment necessary for sample preparation, including a cell-culture hood, incubators, a chemical-fume hood and specimen rotators. Users also have access to common equipment, including automatic dishwashers, autoclaves and cold rooms. The CLIF provides individualized research support, from sample preparation to image acquisition and analysis.

The Micro Fabrication Facility is located within the Center for Optical Materials Science and Engineering Technologies at the Advanced Materials Research Lab in Anderson, South Carolina. This facility provides academic and industry researchers easy access to a complete microelectronic, optoelectronic and MEMS fabrication facility. Processing includes cleaning wafers and photolithography to metal and oxide deposition as well as plasma etching, metrology and device singulation. Complete fabrication of microelectronic, micro-optic and MEMS devices can be accomplished at this facility.

The MUAL is a multi-user mass spectroscopy core facility. The facility primarily focuses on mass spectrometry-based experiments including characterization and quantitation of small molecules and oligomers from a variety of biological and environmental matrices; comprehensive metabolomic analysis, including extensive (isomer) profiling of sugars, lipids, amino compounds and secondary metabolites in plants, microbes and cells; characterization of biopolymers in biomass; quantitative and global proteomic analyses; isotope-based metabolic flux analyses; and accurate mass measurement, isotope-modeling and fragmentation for the structural elucidation of unknown compounds. The facility also offers researchers a wealth of post-analyses services including compound identification using in-house and online mass-spectral libraries, statistical analyses of complex data, and metabolic-pathway analysis to contextualize the metabolomic data, as well as provides hands-on training for graduate students and postdocs in sample collection, processing, method development and instrument operation.

The Clemson University College of Engineering and Science maintains a well-equipped machining facility that is useful for instrumentation development.

The Mackay and Anholt laboratories are consolidated as joint facilities that comprise a 550-square-foot Drosophila laboratory with 12 workstations, each with a dedicated dissecting microscope, and an attached office (99 square feet); and a molecular laboratory (710 square feet) with a lab manager’s office (99 square feet). The molecular laboratory is immediately adjacent to an additional 4,061 square feet representing six remaining labs ranging from 710 square feet to 500 square feet of molecular-laboratory space to accommodate new faculty. The laboratories are equipped with laminar flow and chemical containment hoods and eyewash stations, and the Drosophila laboratory is equipped with a central CO2 distribution system for fly work. There is also a microscopy room for fluorescent microscopy and a workstation for generating transgenic flies, including a microscope, micropipette puller, micromanipulator and an injection system. An ice machine and liquid storage container are in proximity to the laboratories. Drosophila culture: The building has a dedicated media preparation room with autoclave and three temperature- and light-cycle controlled Darwin-incubator Drosophila stock rooms. These facilities are fully equipped for large-scale Drosophila culture and one of the Darwin-incubator rooms serves as a controlled environment for behavioral assays.

Self Regional Hall contains a central 997-square-foot bioinformatics facility to integrate statistical genetics and computational genomics approaches with projects that employ molecular genetics. This suite includes two faculty offices and an office for the director of the bioinformatics and statistical core, Dr. Vijay Shankar. The Bioinformatics suite also has open collaboration space with workstations for staff, students and postdoctoral fellows.

There is dedicated collaboration space with workstations for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and a separate conference room, classroom and seminar room. The seminar room is equipped with computer projection and long-distance video-communication equipment.

Self Regional Hall is connected to the Clemson main campus-supercomputing center via light fiber with immediate capability to advance up to a 100-gig service to support collaborative computational genomic modeling and bioinformatic analysis with the Greenwood Genetic Center, with the Clemson University main campus, and with leading research universities across the United States. The computer and data-management resources support large-scale genomic research collaborations manipulating massive data files. The Center for Human Genetics has its own high-performance computing cluster consisting of four compute nodes with 40 cores each with 192 GB RAM, two high-memory compute nodes with 44 cores each with 1.54 TB RAM, and one dedicated HA-NFS with 500 TB of storage; high memory node (80 cores 1.54 TB RAM), 300 TB storage, workstation with 8-core processor and 64 GB RAM. The Center for Human Genetics also has a dedicated high-memory node (80 cores 1.54 TB RAM) and 300 TB storage on the Palmetto Cluster.