• Imaging Resources:
  • Blatt BioImaging Center
  • Electron Microscopy
• Plant Resources:
  • Greenhouse and Growth-Chamber Facilities
  • Plant Tissue Culture
• Ecology and Evolution Resources:
  • Educational Climate Change Garden
  • Center for Reproductive Evolution
  • Starmer Ecology Field Research Site
• Animal and Tissue Resources:
  • Laboratory Animal Vivarium  (entire university)
  • Lewis Lab Zebrafish Rooms
• Drosophila Kitchen
• Mammalian Tissue Culture
• Fieldwork
• Research Computing
• Syracuse University Library Resources
• Additional Resources:
  • SUNY Upstate Medical University - Core Research Facilities  (adjacent campus)
  • SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry - Research at SUNY-ESF  (adjacent campus)
  • University of Rochester Medical Center - UNYTE Translational Research Network  (nearby campus)

The Blatt BioImaging Center is a light microscopy core facility that focuses on live cell and enhanced resolution imaging of diverse model organisms ranging from cells to organoids and whole organisms. Located on the 3rd floor in the Biology Department in the Life Sciences Complex (Rooms 357A and 359) the imaging center houses state-of-the art confocal microscopes and high-resolution bright field imaging systems. The resources and services of the Blatt BioImaging Center are open to biomedical scientists (students, staff and faculty) at Syracuse University and external investigators at both academic institutions and commercial enterprises in the Upstate New York area.

The N.C. Brown Center for Ultrastructure Studies, located on the second floor of Baker Laboratory (across from Sadler Dorm) on the adjacent SUNY-Environmental Science and Forestry campus, is a teaching, research, and service facility. It is equipped to provide students, faculty, research staff, and industry with virtually every type of microscopy tool, including light, video/digital, scanning electron, and transmission electron microscopy. Although this center is a SUNY facility, all resources are available for use by Syracuse University Biology Department faculty and students.

Among the major items of equipment in the Center are the following:

• a JEOL 2000EX 80-200 KV transmission electron microscope (TEM) with goniometer, bright-field, darkfield and diffraction modes, reaching 2 nm spatial resolution;
• a JEOL 5800LV scanning electron microscope (70 nm resolution) with energy dispersive x-ray analyzer, microstages for mechanical testing of specimens within the scanning microscope chamber;
• a carbon and metal high vacuum evaporator,sputter coater, sliding microtomes, 2 plastic and one cryo/plastic ultramicrotomes with glass knife maker, and diamond knives;
• an array of specialized light microscopes and Spot Digital Cameras: DIC, phase, polarized, bright-field and fluorescence.

Ancillary TEM equipment include:  Balzers 400T freeze-fracture, rotary shadow machine, freeze-substitution device, grid stainer and liquid nitrogen plunge-freeze system.

Resources include:  specimen preparation rooms, photographic darkroom with digital film scanner, electron microscope preparation laboratories, and other supporting facilities.

The Center is staffed with individuals who have more than 70 years of combined experience in sample preparation (including fluorescence and immuno-gold labeling), equipment use and sample interpretation including paper, wood, nanoparticles, vaccines, viruses, bacteria (see publication list on web site). Instruction of graduate and undergraduate students is available through formal coursework in TEM, SEM, Fundamentals of Microscopy, and Medical and Industrial Applications (Prefix MCR). The SALTS laboratory within the NC Brown Center provides commercial, certified (NYSDOH) asbestos fiber testing by Phase Contrast Microscopy for outside clients.

The Syracuse University Biology Department has separate greenhouse and growth-chamber facilities located in the new Life Sciences Complex. The state of the art greenhouse has ten independently controlled rooms including two rooms equipped for studying insects on plants, in addition to a potting shed and seed sorting facility. The rooms are temperature and humidity controlled, and they have automated supplemental lighting and watering systems. The growth-chamber facility has eight controlled-environment chambers of various sizes, including four late-model Conviron E-15 chambers. Policies and procedures for the use of the greenhouses or growth-chamber facilities are explained in the Biology Department Greenhouse Policies and Procedures Guide.

The Syracuse University Libraries have a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) lab that is available for use by all Syracuse University faculty and students. The facility features ESRI software (ARC VIEW and ARC GIS) as well as other compatible software for spatial analysis and imaging, digitizers, scanners, and large plotters. ESRI software is also available for use by Biology faculty and students on PC. For more information, contact John Olson, the Maps & GIS librarian (jaolson@syr.edu, 315.443.4818, 358 Bird Library).

There are numerous opportunities to conduct fieldwork off campus, both in Central New York and in remote locations. For example, graduate students currently conduct research in Idaho, Wyoming, Florida, the United Kingdom, Panama, India, Kenya, and Tanzania.

In addition to the GIS lab, the Syracuse University Libraries have a number of resources offered exclusively to Syracuse University students and faculty. The library maintains a list of available resources for biology and the life sciences. For more information about resources available through the Syracuse University Libraries, contact the Biology librarian.