The Department of Psychology has extensive research facilities available to faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students. The Department's excellence was recognized by the University in 2008 with the completion of a new 103,000 square foot facility. The building houses many research laboratories, including an NIH-compliant vivarium and neuroscience laboratories. The Department of Psychology also houses the Florida Center for Reading Research as well as the Psychology Clinic, a fully operational training center that offers service to the Tallahassee community and surrounding areas.
Our dedicated full-time employees work closely with our faculty to design, develop, and deploy research systems and equipment. Members of the department's technical support staff are some of the best in their respective fields. They include experts in biomedical, electrical, and structural engineering, computer hardware and software support.
Some highlights of our facility include:
- 10 full time, on-site technical support members.
- Custom applications and systems designed & developed in-house.
- On-site server room hosting over 30 admin & research servers.
- Over 2000 gigabit Ethernet ports in the building.
- Wireless coverage in almost all areas of building.
- Three participant waiting rooms streamline research participation and minimize interruptions.
- The physical separation of our classrooms (1st Floor) and our research laboratories (3rd & 4th Floors) reduces traffic in our research area.
- All labs have swipe-card readers for secure access.
- 12 Neuroscience labs that are separated from the 37 dry labs by swipe-card readers. This adds a second level of security for these specialized areas.
- Dry labs are arranged in suites, with areas for data collection, data entry, and a small meeting space that can be used for group data collection sessions.
- Lab space is 100% devoted to research. Graduate and postdoctoral offices are located close by, but separate.
- Common equipment rooms are used in order to free up lab space and isolate noisy and heat-producing equipment.
- Our emergency generators free us from worries about power outages. They can run for a week without refueling.
- Highest quality deionized water in all Neuroscience labs.
Histology / Molecular Labs
The Neuroscience core facility consists of histology lab, Molecular lab, Isotope lab, dark room, microscope room, and the common equipment rooms. It is a shared resource and committed to enhancing and expanding research for the research community. A coordinator oversees and handles the day-to-day management of the lab and provides technical/training support for the users.
The major instruments in the facility include the following: Cryostat, microtome, vibratome, ultra-microtome, water bath, incubator, centrifuge, gamma counter, Bio-Rad thermal cycler and real-time PCR, Nanodrop spectrophotometer, Fluorescence and Stereo Investigator equipped microscope, Laser Capture Microdissection (LCM) system, dual view stereomicroscope with transmitted/fluorescence illumination, X-ray film processor, etc.
Electronics Shop
The electronics shop, in concert with the other technical support facilities, produces a vast array of highly specialized equipment and systems to support the research needs of our faculty members. The shop's adept staff consists of two electrical engineers, one biomedical engineer, and one software engineer. In addition to the fabrication of custom scientific equipment, they are also responsible for the repair of existing equipment used by the department. They are knowledgeable and eager to assist shop users in all stages of the system development life cycle.
The strengths of the electronics shop are not limited to its personnel. The shop utilizes modern CAD software to ensure that even the newest emerging technologies can be implemented into designs with ease. With a printed circuit board (PCB) and computer numerically controlled (CNC) drilling facility onsite, proposed designs can be taken from paper to functional prototype in hours. In addition, there is specialized equipment to create professional grade custom enclosures to ensure that all equipment created by the shop has an elegant, commercial appearance and feel.
Instrument/Machine Shop
This new facility is equipped with a variety of "state of the art" machine shop and fabricating equipment including a 14" x 40" Jet metal lathe, 9" x 42" Bridgeport vertical milling machine, 9" x 48" Vectrax CNC milling machine, Hardinge SV-150 CNC turning center with a 12 station automatic tool changer, drill presses, pedestal grinders and buffers, Grizzly sandblasting machine, punch presses, hydraulic sheet metal sheer and a 4' sheet metal bending brake.
The shop produces a wide variety of parts, components and apparatuses for the department of Psychology research. Projects are engineered and designed using CAD software and CAD/CAM software to help generate dimensions and computer numerically controlled code to program the CNC machines. The shop is a resource for the department faculty to obtain parts and apparatuses that do not exist or cannot be commercially purchased.