The College of Engineering and Applied Science is home to state-of-the-art laboratories and resources that serve the college, the city of Boulder and state of Colorado.
The Colorado Shared Instrumentation in Nanofabrication and Characterization (COSINC), formerly the NCF and CNL facilities, is a multidisciplinary core research facility and service center, within the College of Engineering and Applied Science, that provides access to state-of-the-art equipment in the areas of micro and nanofabrication, nanomaterials characterization and metrology and offers expertise and advanced hands-on training in the same related areas. It is an open-research facility serving the academic, industrial and governmental researchers across campus and beyond. The facility offers a common platform for the convergence of multiple scientific and engineering disciplines and facilitates collaborative research with strategic partners and information exchange. COSINC is impacting and enabling innovations in a wide range of scientific and technological research areas, ranging from electronics, photonics, quantum science, energy and environment to bio-medical, pharmaceutical and nanomedicine.”
The Materials Instrumentation and Multimodal Imaging Core (MIMIC) Facility contains state-of-the-art equipment to assess the structural, mechanical and chemical properties of materials down to the submicron scale. It is an open fee-for-service facility accessible to all researchers including academic, governmental, industrial and individuals. The possible applications for the equipment span multiple academic disciplines, in addition to providing industrially relevant material inspection capabilities. MIMIC’s core expertise covers assessment of biological tissues, biomaterials and biologically inspired systems. In addition, the broad materials science knowledge available at MIMIC has produced successful analyses on a large range of organic and inorganic materials including geological specimens, circuitry, polymer composites and many more.
The Geotechnical Centrifuge Laboratory includes three geotechnical centrifuges. The largest, a 400 g-ton centrifuge, is one of the most powerful in the world and is capable of accelerating a 4,000 lb payload to a maximum of 200 g in about 14 minutes. A 15 g-ton centrifuge accommodates payloads up to 0.45 x 0.42 x 0.60 m and will accelerate a payload of 140 kg up to 200 g.
The Instrument Shop provides mechanical and electrical design and fabrication services. The experienced staff provides solutions for instructional and research needs for any department or college at highly competitive rates. The Instrument Shop is collectively comprised of a machine shop and electronics shop, both of which are located in the basement level of the Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building.