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Research Facilities
 Good research demands excellent facilities and equipment and the
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of
South Carolina is especially fortunate.
After nearly a decade of planning, the Graduate Science Research
Center opened in May 2000. The $36 million building totals 158,000
square feet and, except for the basement, will be occupied solely
by the faculty, staff, and graduate students in the Department of
Chemistry and Biochemistry.
The building was designed from the ground up as a chemistry and
biochemistry research building and features a state-of-the-art
system to control fume hoods and other ventilation apparatus.
Sensors determine whether a hood is in use, how high the sash is
raised, exhausts, and other information about air quality, which
is used by a controller to ensure that flow rates match exacting
health and safety standards. The GSRC uses 100 percent outside
air; there are no air returns, which also increases safety. To
help conserve energy, the hoods alert researchers to lower sashes
when leaving their labs at night. The engineered airflow patterns
make the building not only much safer, but much more efficient
than previous designs.
This leading-edge facility provides space for about 250
scientists. It has 32 faculty offices, 64 four-person labs, 16
two-person labs, and approximately 70 support areas including
instrument space, student and post-doctoral offices, cold rooms,
computer areas, and conference rooms. The core facilities of the
department—the Mass Spectrometry Center, NMR Center, departmental
offices, and stockroom—are located on the first floor for easy
access by all researchers.
In addition to facilities described below, the department
maintains an electronics shop, crystallography facility, and a
wide variety of standard and specialized equipment. The
department’s physical facilities are outfitted with the latest
spectrophotometers and calorimeters, as well as instrumentation
for kinetics studies, inert atmosphere studies, electrochemical
and conductivity analysis, electrophoresis, and chromatography.
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