The Chemistry Department at Union College is housed in the Integrated Science and Engineering Complex (ISEC), F.W. Olin Center, and the Peter Irving Wold Center.
Students and faculty across disciplines collaborate, innovate, learn, and conduct research throughout Union’s new Integrated Science and Engineering Complex. Within this modern building are teaching labs, classrooms, research labs, and faculty offices for biology, chemistry, physics and astronomy, mechanical engineering, and electrical, computer and biomedical engineering. In ISEC, the Chemistry Department has two instrumentation suites that provide resources for collaborative student-faculty research and training in chemistry. These suites house the majority of the department’s shared instrumentation, including a 400-MHz nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer, GC-MS with autosampler, HPLC, preparatory-scale HPLC, FTIR w/ Diamond Anvil ATR, lyophilizer, glove box, microwave synthesizer, polarimeter, fluorometer, UV/Vis diode-array spectrophotometers, UV/VIS/NIR dual monochromator spectrophotometer, and more.
The Olin Center contains the Union Observatory, high-tech classrooms and laboratories, the Office of Health Professions and the Academic Opportunity Program. Many of our students learn Introductory Chemistry in the adjoining lab/classroom spaces on the second floor. Olin also houses the Interdisciplinary Research Instrumentation Suite (IRIS), a shared space for major research instrumentation that cultivates cross-disciplinary interactions among faculty and students. Currently, IRIS is equipped with a Zeiss EVO Variable Pressure Scanning Electron Microscope with Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy and Chemiluminescence, an Asylum MFP-3D-SA atomic force microscope, a Powder X-Ray Diffractometer, a Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometer, Bruker RAMAN Spectrometer, and a Nikon Ti-E microscope.
The Wold Center is a dynamic hub for interdisciplinary work and research. It contains the Wright Biochemistry Research Laboratories and the interdisciplinary Aerogel Lab, where faculty and student researchers manufacture, characterize, and test some of the lightest solid materials known for various applications. The Biochemistry Suite contains labs and resources for collaborative student-faculty biochemistry and molecular biology research, as well as the Kane Biochemistry Teaching Laboratory. The suite holds a cold room, two shared instrumentation rooms, and a culture room. The labs are well equipped with a -80 °C freezer, water polishing system, centrifuges, UV/Vis and fluorescence plate readers, thermal cyclers, qRT-PCR system, gel imaging systems, FPLC, and a PCR cabinet, among other instrumentation.
