This award provides partial support for the acquisition of a laser scanning confocal microscope to be housed in the Optical Analysis Center, a multi-user facility in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alabama. The instrument will meet the growing needs of faculty, students and postdocs in the Departments of Biological Sciences, Chemistry, and Chemical Engineering. The equipment will also support three interdisciplinary centers: The Center for Biomolecular Products, The Center for Freshwater Studies, and The Center for Applied Biological Engineering Research. The instrument will replace a 10-year old scanning confocal which is now obsolete, and will allow in-house optical analyses that currently require researchers to travel to the University of Alabama, Birmingham, over 50 miles away. In addition, the instrument will be available for collaboration and training of students and faculty at several two and four-year institutions in western Alabama. The existing microscope will be retained both to support needs for analysis using inverted optics, as a training instrument for an existing graduate course in microscopy, and for research training of undergraduate students.
