Resources and Equipment
The Biomedical Engineering Department is housed within the Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering on the campus of San Jose State University in downtown San Jose, CA. Principal investigators in the Biomedical Engineering department have designated office and research spaces in their respective building. Researchers at San Jose State University have access to major equipment that is part of both the College of Engineering and College of Science.
Biomedical Engineering Laboratory
The BME department is assigned 4000 sq ft of laboratories in ENG 221 and ENG 233 that is located in departmental space, adjacent to the BME department office suite. ENG 233 is subdivided into a general-purpose area (784 sq ft), a positive pressure cell-culture room (197 sq ft), a PIV system room (302 sq ft). ENG 221 includes a teaching area and experimental research space (2720 sq ft). These laboratory facilities were specifically designed and equipped to support the continuum of teaching/research related to Biomedical Engineering.
Materials Characterization and Metrology Center
The Materials Characterization and Metrology Center (MCMC) at SJSU provides materials characterization, imaging, and chemical analysis capabilities. Establishment of the Center was made possible by support from the National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Award #0421562, and Defense Microelectronics Activity (Cooperative Agreements#H94003-07-2-0705-SJSU and #H94003-08-2-0806-SJSU). The center includes an an FEI Quanta 200 scanning electron microscope (SEM) with energy dispersive X-ray analysis, an Agilent 5500 atomic force microscope (AFM), a Rigaku Ultima III X-Ray Diffractometer (XRD), and a Veeco Wyko NT9100 3-D Optical Profiler. MCMC resources are available to investigators across the SJSU campus as well as neighboring research partners (e.g., NASA Ames, IBM Almaden) and Silicon Valley startup companies via service agreements.
Microscale Process Engineering Laboratory
The Microscale Process Engineering Laboratory (MPEL) at SJSU is a 5000 sq. ft. wafer processing facility that serves as the primary resource for microfabrication at SJSU. The lab supports faculty and student research as well as outreach activities to high schools and community colleges. Wafer processing capabilities include photolithography, oxidation, doping, diffusion, plasma etching, metal deposition, wet processing, and wafer bonding. The lab is supported by a part-time process engineer in charge of lab safety, user training, and equipment maintenance.
Bioprocess Engineering Laboratory
The Bioprocess Engineering Laboratory in the Chemical and Materials Engineering Department is equipped with the following instrumentation: two Applikon computer controlled fermentors, on-line process gas mass spectrometer, Agilent 1100 Series Liquid Chromatograph/Mass Selective Detector (LC/MSD), Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer System, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with diode array spectrometer, UV/Nir spectrometer, gas chromatograph, Eppendorf Mastercycler gradient PCR thermal cycler, as well as DNA electrophoresis and sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDSp AGE) capabilities.
Support Personnel
The College of Engineering provides personnel support to its faculty with one full-time Building Safety Coordinator and four staff members in Engineering Computer Systems (ECS) for computer, software, and network support. The Department of Biomedical Engineering (PI’s Department) has a full-time technician position to support faculty with laboratory development and maintenance. Affirmation of commitment to the project is provided in a letter of organizational commitment from the Chair of Biomedical Engineering.
Particle Image Velocimetry lab
The Biomedical Engineering Laboratory is equipped with state-of-the-art time-resolved Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) by TSI. The laser source and camera have been selected with high frame rate to achieve elevated temporal resolution. The main laser is a 527µm 30mJ dual head Nd-YLF unit by Photonics, coupled with a Phantom V2640 camera. The system is able to acquire 2048×1024 pixel images at a repetition rate up to 5,000 frames per second; lower resolutions allow it to reach higher frame rates. TSI’s proprietary acquisition software, INSIGHT 4G, runs on a computer equipped with a 6-core, 2.6 GHz processor and 16 GB of RAM. This computer meets the processing requirements for collecting and analyzing data, and the 1.5 TB hard drive is sufficiently large to store results from several active experiments. The PIV system can be used by seeding the flow with fluorescing droplets or particles, or light-scattering particles. An oil droplet generator is available for use in wind tunnel projects. The system is also equipped for microscale PIV. A Leica microscope is combined with an Andor camera and a 5W continuous laser source to measure flow fields with dimensions ranging from tens to hundreds of microns.
Individual Faculty Resources
Apart from the instrumentation, the PI has sufficient resources (e.g., funds for student assistants and experiment consumables) for the proposed projects. In addition, the PI’s collaborator on this project, Dr. Ramasubramanian, was able to bring all the necessary equipment from his previous institution (UT San Antonio), and is also supported by a DoD contract to investigate platelet function upon storage that includes support for technicians. The PI has been successful in winning an NSF Major Research Instrumentation for the acquisition of a Particle Image Velocimetry system (Dr. Ramasubramanian is a co-PI on that grant), as well as multiple intramural mini-grants such as Central RSCA Grant, RSCA Infusion Grant, Undergraduate Research Grant from the SJSU Provost's Office, Student Research Scholars from the College of Engineering.
Cell Culture Laboratory: The research laboratory is currently equipped with a biosafety cabinet, incubators,
autoclaves, triple negative cell lines, 4, -25, and -80°C refrigerator/freezers, specialized
and general equipment.
College of Engineering Central Machine Shop
Central shops is an extensively equipped metal and fabrication shop, it is located in rooms 184, 186, 188, 190 of the Engineering building. Equipped with CNC mill and CNC lathe along with a metal working section with a brake, sheer, punches and welder. A wood and composite section with bead blaster, grinders, saws and a paint booth. Also access to 3D printers and laser cutter. Central shops is for support with school and faculty projects, as well as onsite manufacturing equipment. Central shops can help not only with manufacture but design and purchasing of necessary hardware and offsite manufacturing if necessary. Services available to faculty and staff include equipment repair and maintenance, manufacture and fabrication of consumables for labs and research, special event support, engraving for signage and directories and door lock programming.
3D Printers
Several 3D printers available to assist with design and prototyping. The Biomedical Engineering Department owns two fused-deposition-modeling printers for quick and rapid prototyping of polymer components, one of which is directly controlled by the PI. Printable materials include ABS, PLA, and polyurethane-based thermoplastic elastomers. Additional 3D printing facilities are available through the College of Engineering “Makerspace”. The Makerspace is a collaborative work space for making, learning, exploring and sharing that uses high tech to no tech tools.
Chemistry Core Facilities: The Department of Chemistry maintains a collection of instrumentation that is utilized
for both teaching and research-related activities. The instrumentation is distributed
between teaching labs, research labs, and shared-use instrumentation centers. This
includes NMR spectrometers and an Ultrapure water system needed for this proposal.
A detailed list is provided in the Equipment section.
Biology Core Facilities: The Department of Biology maintains a collection of facilities and instrumentation for both teaching and research-related activities. Importantly, a recently purchased Zeiss LSM 700 fluorescence confocal microscope is part of the Department of Biology facilities, and student researchers from my lab have been trained and granted access. The Zeiss LSM 700 allows us to probe our cell cultures. Autoclaves and cell culture equipment are a part of this facility as well. A detailed list is given in the Equipment section.
List of equipment available in the Biomedical Engineering Labs
