Environmental Engineering
The Environmental Engineering Graduate program is located in the Sustainable Energy and Environmental Complex and Laboratories (SEEC/SEEL) at CU Boulder. Our laboratories are available for environmental engineering research for microbiology, chemistry, water quality, air quality, molecular biology, toxicology, and field ecology. Available equipment includes:
The Environmental Microbiology Laboratory supports research in virology/cell culture, molecular microbiology, bacteriology, phage microbiology, toxicology, media preparation. Multiple temperature and variable atmosphere incubators support a broad spectrum of classical microbiological assays. This laboratory also supports mammalian cell culture, including 10 m3 stainless steel walk-in chambers isolating controlled environment incubators separating pre- and post-infection cell lines. Also included, are standard equipment for plaque assays (inverted microscopes), genetic material extraction, membrane immobilization, and DNA/RNA hybridizations. PCR and qPCR thermocyclers, electrophoresis units and associated illuminators, photographic documentation equipment as well as DNA sequencer are all available. This laboratory includes a microscopy lab which houses several modern microscopes including a Olympus phase contrast station, and a Nikon E-400 compound epifluorescent microscope with multiple filter sets capable of detecting a wide spectrum of biological stains. Access to a transmission, scanning and environmental electron microscope is also available in CU Boulder's imaging facility.
The Center for Environmental Mass Spectrometry (CEMS) focuses on the detection of pharmaceuticals, hormones, and other organic contaminants in water and evaluating the effectiveness of methods for removing these compounds. Instrumentation housed at the Center for Environmental Mass Spectrometry includes:
A separate laboratory on CU main campus is licensed for radioisotope handling and storage (35S, 32P, 14C, and 15N) and includes two liquid scintillation counters.