This system is equipped with a low temperature unit which allows for cryo crystallographic studies. Protein crystallographic software is implemented on an Indigo2 workstation with High Impact Graphics. This instrument is used for structural characterization of a wide range of polycrystalline materials. The development of powerful workstations has decreased dependence on mainframe computers. Most research has migrated to the college cluster of SGI workstations, or mini- and microcomputers in the research labs.
Most labs have several personal computers that are used for data analysis and word processing.
Nearly all departmental computers are now linked via a high-speed network. The College of Science and Math computer facilities also support instructional computing in Silicon Graphics, Sun, and DEC Alpha UNIX labs, two PowerMac labs and two Windows-NT labs. Chemical application software installed on the UNIX servers includes Gaussian 94, GCG, ISIS, and various molecular modeling and visualization programs. Students have Internet access to e-mail and the Web from nearly any departmental computer.