nanoscience
neuroscience
science and society
computational science
materials science
Marian E. Koshland Biographical Memoir by Ruth Levy Guyer (National Academy of Sciences)
Interdisciplinary Programs
Research Opportunities &
Scholarships
The Departments of astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, physics, and psychology are housed in the state-of-the-art Marian E. Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center (KINSC). The KINSC is also home to interdisciplinary Areas of Concentration in Biochemistry and Biophysics and Neural and Behavioral sciences. These departments and programs are served by a common computational suite, a modern and spacious science library with on-line access to the collections at Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Swarthmore, a 120-seat auditorium, additional smaller modern classrooms, and numerous informal interaction spaces. Increased opportunities for learning and collaboration at the interfaces between science disciplines are a special feature of the new facility.The Biology Department is housed in Sharpless Hall and the East Wing of the KINSC. The Department contains eight fully equipped faculty research laboratories, three new and recently renovated teaching laboratories, a media preparation facility, tissue culture rooms, instrument rooms, dark rooms, many constant temperature rooms, and other support functions. The teaching laboratories have a new and forward-looking bench design that fosters collaborative work amongst students and includes computer workstations integrated into the design. The Department also has much of the equipment needed to support modern research in molecular and cell biology including: -70° freezers, liquid nitrogen storage, incubators and shakers for microbial and tissue culture work, tissue culture hoods, a Storm 860 imaging system, ultracentrifuges for preparative and analytical uses, refrigerated centrifuges, spectroscopic tools such as several UV-vis spectrophotometers and a circular dichroism spectropolarimeter, a fluorescence activated cell sorter, an Hitachi electron microscope with digital imaging capability housed in the KINSC microscopy suite, stereo and immunofluorescence microscopes, FPLC and HPLC instruments, scintillation and gamma counters, ELISA readers, densitometers, gel dryers and all of the standard equipment necessary for the support of a sophisticated cell and molecular biology curriculum and the research programs of the faculty. The Department also shares a confocal microscope with the Department of Biology at Bryn Mawr College.
Facilities in the Chemistry Department, in the East Wing of the KINSC, enable students to use modern, sophisticated instrumentation at all levels of study. There are four laboratories for course work; three instrument rooms; specialized equipment rooms; and a walk-in cold room. Six additional laboratories provide space in which students conduct research jointly with the faculty. There is a laser laboratory equipped with nitrogen-dye, helium-cadmium, neodymium-YAG, and diode lasers and detection systems for time-resolved fluorescence and Raman spectroscopies. A computational chemistry laboratory equipped with Windows- and UNIX-based workstations allows students to explore molecular structure and properties using Gaussian, Spartan, and Insight/Discover computational packages. Major computer-accessed equipment items available for use by students in structured courses and in research tutorial work include two Bruker nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers (200 MHz and 300 MHz); a Hewlett-Packard 5988A mass spectrometer coupled to a 5890 capillary column gas chromatograph and a PE Clarus-500 GC/MS; a Nicolet 950 Fourier transform Raman spectrometer; Nicolet Magna 550 and Perkin-Elmer Spectrum 1000 Fourier transform infrared spectrometers; a SPEX Fluorolog-2 flourimeter; JASCO V570, Perkin Elmer Lambda 2, and Shimadzu 160U spectrophotometers, and Hi-Tech SF51 and Olis RSM stopped flow spectrometers; a Perkin-Elmer 341 polarimeter; a Princeton Applied Research 273 electrochemical analyzer; two Rainin and one Hewlett-Packard high-performance liquid chromatographs; a GBC-Difftech MMA powder X-ray diffractometer; Applied Biosystems 433A and Rainin PS3 automated peptide synthesizers, and a ProteinSolutions DynaPro dynamic light scattering instrument. In addition to these items, other gas chromatographs, colorimeters, vacuum systems, pH meters, balances, and high-precision electrical and optical equipment are available and used in instructional work. The science division machine shop provides for construction of special apparatus.
The computer science, mathematics, and physics programs, housed in the Hilles and Harris wings of the KINSC, place a special emphasis on the use of computers for symbolic manipulation, numerical computation, and the acquisition and analysis of laboratory data.
The Computer Science Program (www.cs.haverford.edu) maintains two laboratories. The Teaching Lab (located in KINSC H110) contains ten Macintosh OSX workstations and a login/file server. This server is also used for presentations in conjunction with the lab's AV system. Secure remote access is available via standard Internet tools (e.g., ssh, sftp). Applications available include programming languages (e.g., C, C++, Python, Scheme, Haskell and Java), as well as tools for logic circuit design (TkGate), compiler design and implementation (bison, flex), graphics (OpenGL), symbolic/numeric computation (Mathematica), and mathematical typesetting (LaTeX). These workstations can also be clustered for parallel computation using PVM, MPI
or Xgrid.
The Computer Science Research Lab (KINSC L310) contains four workstations (two Macintosh OSX, two Linux/Windows dual-boot) designed to support student learning as well as faculty research. These workstations are part of a larger cooperative Beowulf project between Astronomy (www.haverford.edu/physics-astro) and Computer Science (www.cs.haverford.edu/pulsar). Other parts of this computational cluster are located in the Computer Science Lounge (three nodes) and throughout the Koshland Integrated Natural Science Center (approximately 50 nodes).Computer Science students can enter either Lab at any time of the day using the campus HaverCard.
In addition to the shared computing facilities in the Harris wing of the KINSC, the Mathematics Department maintains a pair of adjacent rooms in the basement of Hilles; one functions as a classroom for courses that incorporate computer use into collaborative learning and the other serves groups of students who need to use Mathematica alongside other specialized mathematics and typesetting software, such as ODE Architect and LaTeX. Five evenings a week these rooms, H011 and H012, are staffed by mathematics majors and faculty, who transform it into the Math Question Center, open to students in both beginning and advanced courses who need encouragement and assistance while working on projects and homework. Students also work alone and together in the comfortable math lounge on the second floor of Hilles, immediately adjacent to math faculty offices and workspaces. From all of these spaces students have wireless access to the campus network. The four iBooks in H011 and the fourteen PC and Mac desktop machines in H012 are available for student use when these rooms are not reserved for classes or discussion sessions.
Facilities for the Physics Department, in the Harris Wing, include three well-equipped laboratories for instruction and eleven labs for research involving students. The laboratory for nanofabrication and scanning tunneling microscopy houses an ultra-high vacuum scanning tunneling microscope (STM) with atomic resolution, an atomic force microscope, and a high resolution optical microscope. Physics maintains a dedicated instructional computer laboratory containing a network of computers with Mathematica software and universal laboratory interfaces for experiments.
The biophysics laboratory includes a microscopy and manipulation cluster for biology and nanoscale science, shared with biology and chemistry. This facility provides a unique combination of capabilities, including a high-resolution atomic force miscroscopy capable of imaging biological samples in solution, and a laser tweezer and micromanipulator/microinjection system for manipulating biological samples. Additional facilities include a Langmuir trough for fabricating synthetic ion channel biomembranes and a video fluorescence microscopy system for studies of model membrane systems.
The nonlinear dynamics and fluids laboratory includes state-of-the-art systems for digital image collection and instrumentation for remote measurement of fluid flow and particle velocities. Computational facilities include two up-to-date PC-based computer clusters for student research and instructional use, as well as various UNIX workstations and graphics terminals for high performance scientific computing, image processing, and molecular studies.
The Psychology Department occupies the upper two floors of Sharpless Hall in the KINSC. Computers are used throughout psychology for experimental presentation, data collection, statistical analysis, and the simulation of mental and biological processes. The department utilizes the common KINSC computational suite, which includes 20 workstations equipped with E-Prime and SPSS software. In addition, four laboratory suites are devoted to faculty and student research. The cognition laboratory includes a computer-controlled Midi keyboard and music synthesizer system capable of generating a wide variety of stimuli for studies in perception and memory. Other equipment includes audio-sound systems, VCRs, and a computer-interfaced response system for data collection. The biological psychology laboratory includes a teaching facility, an animal colony, equipment for computer-controlled experiments in animal learning and behavior and equipment for the recording of physiological responses in humans. The human neuropsychology lab contains computerized systems for laterality experiments and a 40-channel Neuroscan EEG system. The social psychology laboratory includes computerized questionnaire design and response stations as well as equipment to record dyadic interactions and experience-based reactions. Finally, the department also houses a digital video-editing facility.
Facilities for the Astronomy Department include the William J. Strawbridge Observatory given in 1933 and built around an earlier structure. The observatory has its own library, classroom, computer room, and workspace for departmental students. Facilities include a computer-controlled 16-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope with three CCD cameras; a CCD spectrometer; a 12-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope; three portable 8-inch telescopes with outside piers; a 4-inch solar telescope; and a 7-foot L-band (1.4 Ghz) radio telescope. Workstations are used for processing data from the CCD camera as well as radio and optical data collected at other observatories. The astronomy library contains 3,000 bound volumes and most of the relevant astronomy journals. All of these facilities are available for use by students. Haverford is part of an eight-college consortium which provides research assistantships for a summer students exchange program, grants for student travel to outside observatories, and a yearly symposium at which students present their research.
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