Facilities and Equipment
Swarthmore's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry is housed in a state-of-the-art, integrated science facility, which includes modern classrooms and teaching laboratories as well as a generous amount of laboratory space for student-faculty research.
Chemistry equipment
The College's labs are equipped with modern instrumentation that students use in their course work and research. Among the major items are:
- Bruker Ascend 400MHz NMR with autosampler
- electron spin resonance spectrometer
- high-performance liquid chromatography apparatus
- X-ray diffractometer
- circular dichroism spectrometer, AVIV 410
- gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer
- molecular modeling and visualization facility using GAUSSIAN software
- infrared and ultraviolet/visible spectrophotometers
- capillary electrophoresis apparatus
- high-precision differential scanning (micro) calorimeter
- various spectrofluorimeters
- multiple GCs used in organic laboratory
Specialized Biochemistry equipment
- One AKTA Basic and two units of AKTA Prime - high quality liquid chromatography system for protein purification.
- PCR Thermal Cycler and MJ Research MiniCycler with Hot Bonnet
- Cell Disruptor: Microfluidics M-110Y microfluidizer - can lyse large volumes of bacteria very quickly.
- Two Refrigerated Centrifuges - Sorvall RC-5C centrifuge with SS-34 rotor and Sorvall RC-6+
- Small Volume Nanodrop ND-1000 UV/Visible spectrophotometer - great for protein or DNA concentrations, requires only 1-2 ul of sample.
- Refrigerated Incubator Shaker, Amerex 747R with spring platform to accommodate a variety of tube and flask sizes.
- Incubator Shakers: New Brunswick Scientific C25 and refrigerated shaker, Amerex 747
- Wallac 1420 Victor2: Multilabel counter for quantitative detection of light-emitting or light-absorbing markers.
If you have any questions about our facilities, contact Ian McGarvey, our facility manager and scientific instrumentation specialist :

Ian McGarvey
Office: Science Center 163
Phone: 610-328-8241
e-mail: imcgarv1@swarthmore.edu