Our newly renovated laboratory facilities in Pacific Hall include over 3,500 square feet of lab space divided into three analytical labs, dishwashing room, storage space, and freezers. Office space is available for graduate students, technicians, and postdoctoral associates. An excellent machine / electronics shop is available for any needed technical expertise is setting up the field equipment. SPA Lab members have direct access to the following instruments:
- Thermo Scientific FlashSmart Elemental Analyzer (EA). It measures CHNS/O, NC, N/Protein analyzer
- Elementar Isoprime Pyrocube EA + stable isotope ratio mass spectrometer (IRMS)
- Field deployable Bruker V XRF hand-help capable of determining concentrations of dozens of elements simultaneously
- Field-deployable Picarro Laser Analyzer G2201-I capable of determining concentrations and carbon isotope ratios of greenhouse gases.
- Custom-made field-deployable clear chambers for isotopic labeling experiments
- Astoria-Pacific 2 elemental auto-analyzer
- Costech CN combustion analyzer
- UV-VIS and calibrated methods for pedogenic energy determination in-house
- Automated Soxhlet extraction system for plant cellulose and lipid extractions
- Cryogenic distillation system for plant water and soil water extraction
- Dendrochronology facility and software and in-house calibrated protocols
- Computer Lab and MatLab software package for spatial modeling
- Barnstead NANOpure Diamond water purification system
- Various large incubators, freezers, and refrigerators
- Fisher Isotemp drying oven
- Marathon 21000 centrifuge
- Marathon 16KM centrifuge
- LiCor 6400 portable photosynthesis system
- LiCor 6400-09 chamber for measuring soil respiration
- LiCor LI-7000 CO2/H2O analyzer
- SRI 8610C gas chromatograph with FID, ECD, and methanizer
- IN/US GC-RAM 4 Flow-Through Radioisotope Detector for GC
- Fisher muffle furnace
- Fisher Accu 124D Dual Range balance
- Sartorious CP2P balance microbalance
- Various 2-place balances
- Thermo Spectronic Genesys 5 spectrophotometer
- Various computers, printers, scanners, etc.
- Welch dry vacuum pump
- New Brunswick Scientific C10 platform shaker
- Lachat BD-46 block digester
- Plas Labs anaerobic glovebox
- Dynamax TH2O Theta soil moisture probe
- Sentek Diviner 2000 TDR soil moisture probe
- various pH/conductivity meters
- Custom-made aluminum frames for point-intercept method of determining plant cover
- Mechanical root washer
- Mechanical sievers and plant / soil automated grinder
- Crop Circle ACS 430 hand-held 3-channel canopy sensor (for NDVI, etc.)
- PMS 1000 Pressure Chamber for determine plant water potential
Bioinformatics Core Facility: Our partner laboratories at the Institute of Ecology & Evolution are equipped for molecular microbial ecology and microbial isolation and culture; equipment includes thermal cyclers, a PCR clean hood, a FastPrep sample homogenizer, a vacuum desiccator, ultralow freezers, horizontal submarine gel rigs, Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis equipment, UV transilluminator, gel photodocumentation system, laminar flow hood with UV sterilization, centrifuges, incubators, freezers, refrigerators and water baths. Autoclaves and a walk-in cold room are available nearby and a microscope room; equipment includes Nikon Eclipse Ti and Zeiss Axiophot microscopes.The University of Oregon recently constructed a supercomputer cloud, called ACISS (Applied Computation Instrument for Scientific Synthesis) for use by the UO Bioinformatics Core Facility. ACISS is composed of three kinds of compute nodes (basic, fat and GPU), a 400TB IBRIX scalable storage system, and a Voltaire Vantage 8500 10GigE network switch. Hardware details are available athttp://aciss.uoregon.edu/wiki/ACISS _Hardware. Available software includes R, Mathematica, MatLab, Python, various compilers, and a variety of sequence analysis programs.
High-throughput Genomics Core Facility: The University of Oregon’s Genomics Core Facility has two next generation, massively parallel sequencers (Illumina Hi-Seq 4000 and Illumina Next-Seq sequencing systems and associated analysis computer cluster). The core facility provides sequencing and upstream bioinformatics at a discount price to UO affiliated researchers. The facility has an adjacent cluster of 24 quad-core Intel processors, with multiple RAID storage arrays, to analyze the approximately 4 Terabytes of data produced by the Illumina machine during each run.
Stable Isotope Facility: Our partner laboratories at Earth Sciences include stable isotope facilities specializing in inorganic samples. For organic samples we rely on our long-established relationship with the University of California Davis Stable Isotope Facility (SIF) and Microbial Ecology Labs specializing in DNA-SIP (Stable Isotope Probing).
Educational facilities: University of Oregon’s Center for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math through Outreach, Research, and Education (STEM CORE) offers a variety of resources to support the educational activities of this project. STEM CORE maintains and fosters a broad network of connections with interest in K-12 STEM education and including partners and representatives from local industries, government agencies, educational non-profit organizations, university and community college faculty and staff from a wide variety of academic units, and K-12 educators and administration. This network serves as resource pool for expertise and input on educational activities as well as for dissemination of ideas and announcements by means of monthly hosted meetings and an email list that reaches over 180 members. STEM CORE faculty, which includes two co-directors with tenure-line faculty appointments in Physics and Education Studies, respectively, an associate director, and a coordinator, has expertise in teacher professional development, curriculum development, education research, directing research experience for undergraduate programs, and expertise in physical and life sciences. A center coordinator and student assistant are available to support logistical and technical aspects of activities. STEM CORE regularly supports education and outreach projects serving teachers and students throughout the state by: (1) arranging and facilitating teacher workshops and school visit logistics, (2) maintaining open dialogue with school administrators and educators, and (3) assisting in the lesson plan documentation, standards alignment, and dissemination of curriculum. In addition, STEM CORE maintains a resource library of science teaching materials available (e.g., a mobile scanning electron microscope, Rasberry PIs, and Vernier probeware) for check out by students, faculty, and K-12 educators. STEM CORE is housed in Willamette Hall on the University of Oregon campus.
Environmental Leadership Program: The Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary service-learning program housed in the University of Oregon Environmental Studies Program. We match student teams with non-profit organizations, governmental agencies and businesses to address local environmental needs. Our students gain leadership, communication and professional skills by engaging directly in applied problem-resolution while providing valuable assistance to our community partners.
Our facilities and technical staff are equipped to provide:
- Undergraduate students with unique and practical learning experiences that develop field-based research, writing and presentation skills;
- Graduate students with project management and team-building experience and skills; and
- Organizations with cost-effective and high-quality environmental and leadership training services.
InfoGraphics Lab: is a cartography and geospatial technology facility housed in the Department of Geography at the University of Oregon. We serve the Department and the University community of faculty, staff, and students; and the State of Oregon through the application of innovative geospatial technologies, environmental data analysis, cartographic design, geographic information science, and teaching and training. Please contact us with any mapping or project ideas that you would like to discuss. We support research, instruction, and public service activities at the University through a range of involvement from stand-alone consultations to multi-year collaborations. Our career instructors offer training in large dataset analysis and graphic animations in a variety of coding languages as well as hands-on training in the production of maps to inform the general public, researchers, and policy makers.
SPA Research Lab 