State-of-the-art facilities are available for biophysics research at Memorial. Researchers in our group make use of a modern NMR lab, surface characterization and imaging, and a high performance supercomputing cluster.

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)

The NMR lab contains three spectrometers, a Bruker AVANCE II 600MHZ, a Bruker AVANCE 500MHz, and a Tecmag APOLLO 300MHz. All instruments are user run with training provided by research assistants and are available 24 hours per day, seven days per week. A full description of the NMR facilities at Memorial are available on the Centre for Chemical Analysis, Research and Training (C-CART) web site.

Our Newest Aquisition: The Bruker AVANCE II 600

This instrument is equipped with high-resolution, solid-state and micro-imaging capabilities, enabling a wide range of materials to be researched, from proteins and inorganic solids characterization to diffusion coefficients measurements. Each system comes with specific probes to cover a large variety of nuclei and experiments:

High-resolution:

• Inverse triple resonance probe, VT, Z-gradient for ¹H observation with ¹³C, ¹⁵N decoupling
• ¹⁹F/¹H dual probe with ¹H decoupling, Z-gradient, VT.

Solid-State:

• Flat coil dual-tuned probe for ¹H to ¹⁵N/³¹P cross-polarization
• Flat coil triple tuned CP probe: ¹H/¹⁹F/²H
• Triple tuned CP/MAS probe with VT : ¹H/¹³C/¹⁵N
• Triple tuned CP/MAS probe with VT: ¹H/³¹P/¹³C
• Triple tuned CP/MAS probe with VT :¹H/¹⁹F/X (X=¹⁵N-³¹P)

Micro-imaging:

VT, actively shielded gradients probehead with exchangeable:

• ¹H solenoid insert for 2 mm samples
• ¹H RF inserts for 5 and 10 mm samples
• ²H/¹H insert for 5 mm samples
• Z-gradient coil for diffusion applications

These instruments were purchased with financial support from CFI, IRIF and NSERC.

High Performance Computing

Computational research at Memorial makes use of the super-computing facilities of the ACEnet consortium. Memorial hosts the headquarters and the largest component of ACEnet's computing centre. Within the placentia cluster, located at Memorial, researchers can make use of up to 3740 processor cores in parallel. ACEnet is also a member the Compute Canada platform, which allows researchers at Memorial to make use of computing clusters across Canada. The Department of Chemistry has specialized in computational chemistry, which provides resources and expertise to computational biophysics research at Memorial.