Resources

The University of Pittsburgh offers our faculty access to advanced and up-to-date shared equipment, and to experts that perform services that enables world-leading experimental research.   

Much of today’s advanced research requires access to instruments, facilities, and services that too expensive for individual faculty to obtain and too complicated for individual laboratories to maintain.  Some equipment is sensitive or fragile or uses or produces dangerous chemicals and requires special building designs addressing constraints on floor strength, electromagnetic radiation, vibration, or air handling.  Increasingly, faculty work together on large-scale collaborative research projects, leveraging shared resources that are professionally managed. 

A few examples of the types of equipment and services offered are described below. Full details about equipment and all services currently offered are available through our lab management software. 

Equipment Examples

DMG MORI Precision Milling Machine. This instrument is a precision Computerized Numerical Control (CNC) mill, which can make parts and prototypes from the smallest to the largest sizes far faster, more capably, and with minimal user intervention.  It is used in prototyping and manufacturing for everything from quantum experiments to building repair wheels for the Allegheny Observatory.

Mass Spectrometers. The university has multiple liquid chromatography/ mass spectrometers, from manufacturers including Agilent and SCIEX models.  Some systems support sample preparation, chromatography, and mass spectrometry, as well as software to acquire high-quality data. 

Service Examples

Cancer Bioinformatics Services (CBS). The CBS provides comprehensive bioinformatics support for translational genomics at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. CBS provides support for all aspects of genomics studies, from experimental design to data analysis to publication, and for all genomic Next Generation Sequencing applications, including RNA Sequencing, whole exome sequencing (WES) and many others are supported.  CBS teaches genomics classes at the Health Science Library System and the center for research computing.