RESEARCH FACILITIES AND SPECIAL PROGRAMS

Research and Research Facilities

Since its designation as a university in 1947, The Florida State University has built a reputation as a strong center for research in the sciences, the humanities, and in the arts. During fiscal year 2000, The Florida State University faculty generated approximately $116.9 million in funding to supplement state funds used for research. These external funds, derived through contracts and grants from various private foundations, industries, and government agencies, are used to provide stipends for graduate students, to improve research facilities, and to support the research itself.

Many members of The Florida State University faculty are renowned scholars in their fields. In the natural sciences, The Florida State University is perhaps best known for its basic research programs in physics, nuclear science, chemistry, biology, psychology, meteorology, and oceanography. Its programs in geology, mathematics, computer science, and statistics also have strong research components, both basic and applied. The University also has a joint program in engineering with Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) in Tallahassee.

For the urgent preservation of Florida's beaches, a combined study of storm surge impact, the history and projected future of hurricanes, and shore characteristics-and the resultant erosion-is conducted by the Beaches and Shores Resource Center. The center contracts with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to furnish the scientific underpinnings for the Florida Coastal Construction Control Line, an attempt to contain burgeoning beach development by setting construction projects back from the water's edge.

Structural Biology, a collaboration of the University's Departments of Chemistry and Biological Sciences, is a research emphasis of the Institute of Molecular Biophysics. Research conducted by Structural Biology faculty focuses on the three-dimensional structure of biologically important macromolecules and the structural correlates of their functional properties. Grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and the Markey Charitable Trust enabled the recent acquisition of state-of-the-art facilities including X-ray crystallography, cryoelectron microscopy, computer-based molecular modeling, bioanalytical sequencing/synthesis and NMR, electron paramagnetic resonance, laser and fluorescence spectroscopies. Graduate students working under Structural Biology faculty can enroll in either the molecular biophysics (MOB) PhD program or in the graduate programs of chemistry or biological science.

Essential to geological investigation is the preservation of the sediment collected on research expeditions. One of the largest deep-sea sediment cold storage facilities, the Antarctic Research Facility, is located at the University. The facility, holding more than 10 miles of Antarctic core samples, operates as a worldwide resource for scientists both on campus and throughout the world.

The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Institute provides a focus for theoretical and experimental studies of dynamical processes in the atmosphere, oceans, and the interior of the Earth and other planets, conducted by faculty and students in applied mathematics, dynamic meteorology, engineering, geology, geophysics, and physical oceanography. The institute's experimental facilities include a well equipped fluid mechanics laboratory, an electronics development laboratory, a precision machine shop, a laser laboratory, several precision rotating turntables, and a unique rotating annulus which is used to simulate the general circulation of the atmosphere.

All aspects of child behavior and learning are researched in the Educational Research Center for Child Development. The center, a model for other national early educational research centers, provides a research site and laboratory setting in which faculty and graduate students may observe and work with young children.

The research needs of the state of Florida in the area of health and human service policy are responded to by the Institute for Health and Human Services Research. The institute has an open-door interdisciplinary approach with participating faculty from all academic units.

Computing and information technology are widely used at The Florida State University for both research and instruction. A high speed computer network reaches throughout the campus and connects the University to the Internet. The Florida State University also participates in Internet 2, which provides access to a special high capacity national network for academic purposes. Academic Computing and Network Services (ACNS) provides free accounts for computer and Internet access to all students, faculty, and staff. ACNS also operates general purpose computing servers and supercomputers that are available to the entire campus, and provides open-access computer laboratories for students. For more information, see http://www.acns.fsu.edu.

Special Programs in Research

A number of special Florida State University programs have won national or international distinction in research. These include the following:

The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, which opened in 1994, is one of the nation's newest research laboratories and the only user facility of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. The laboratory develops and provides a variety of research magnets at the highest fields available in the world. The laboratory plays a major role in the international race to enhance scientific disciplines as diverse as biology, chemistry, engineering, geochemistry, materials science, medicine, and physics.

Under the guidance of the laboratory's chief scientist, Nobel Laureate Robert Schrieffer, this unique facility supports an extensive in-house research program that advances its scientific and technical capabilities. The in-house research program is built around leading scientists and engineers who concentrate on the study of strongly correlated electron systems, molecular conductors, magnetic materials, magnetic resonance, cryogenics, and new approaches to measuring materials properties in high magnetic fields. Research at the laboratory is opening new frontiers of science at high magnetic fields, which have enormous potential for commercial and industrial applications. The laboratory also has one of the world's foremost magnet and science technology groups, which designs and builds this new generation of magnets. In 1999, the lab brought on line a new 45-Tesla hybrid magnet, the most powerful magnet of its kind in the world. The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory has many exciting research opportunities for graduate students who wish to pursue research at the edge of parameter space in any area of science utilizing these world-class resources and instrumentations.

The Florida State University has established an interdisciplinary School of Computational Science and Information Technology (CSIT) to support graduate education and research, to provide a leading-edge high-performance computational facility, and to contribute to a high level of computational culture beneficial to the nation and the state.

CSIT embraces all of the possible inferences drawn from its name: its scope includes the science and technology of performing, analyzing, and archiving large-scale computations over wide-area networks, and its goal is to employ large-scale computer and network resources in pursuit of scientific and technological research goals. Both the tools and content of computational science are embraced by the educational mission of the school.

The Computational and Information Science Laboratory (CISL) provides the infrastructure for the interdisciplinary research and education programs. Through the acquisition and maintenance of the state-of-the-art computing, visualization, and high-bandwidth network connections to other major national centers, the laboratory provides support for The Florida State University's existing and future user-base of large-scale high-performance computing. A user services staff proactively inculcates a high-performance computing culture through consulting services and short courses.

The Center for Materials Research and Technology (MARTECH) is a collaborative program in materials science involving members of the University's physics, chemistry, and engineering departments. The center's rapidly expanding facilities include a crystal-growing and thin-film preparation lab, a light-scattering facility, a fast Fourier Transform Far Infrared spectrometer laboratory, a facility for fabricating nanostructure materials, extensive surface analysis equipment including XPS, helium-scattering and scanning probe microscopy and equipment for the study of electrical transport and magnetic as well as superconducting properties of complex materials.

The Program in Nuclear Research enjoys a high national ranking and emphasizes nuclear structure physics; radioactive beam studies; studies of nuclear reaction mechanisms using polarized Li beams; accelerator based atomic physics; electron scattering; and relativistic heavy ion reactions. A large part of the program in experimental nuclear physics and atomic physics uses Florida State University's Superconducting Linear Accelerator Facility, which ran its first experiment in 1987. The facility consists of a Super-FN tandem Van de Graaff electrostatic accelerator which injects into a heavy-ion superconducting linear accelerator. The facility utilizes state of the art instrumentation and provides forefront nuclear research capability.

The Institute for Molecular Biophysics is recognized as a national leader in basic, interdisciplinary research in biochemistry and physical chemistry. A large effort based in the IMB is its Program in Structural Biology, begun in 1990. The primary research focus of this group is the elucidation of the three-dimensional structures, functional properties, and assemblages of biological macromolecules using biophysical techniques (e.g. X-ray crystallography, cryoelectron microscopy, electron diffraction, computational modeling, EPR and NMR spectroscopy).

The Florida State University Marine Laboratory, located 45 miles south of Tallahassee on Apalachicola Bay, is the only state-run marine research facility that gives scientists from all over the nation immediate access to a pollution-free environment in Florida. Facilities include a fleet of research vessels, a complete dive locker, classrooms, saltwater-equipped labs, and guest houses.

The Cooperative Institute for Tropical Meteorology was created in 1993 through a partnership between The Florida State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the parent agency of the National Weather Service. The Institute brings together faculty at the University with research and operational meteorologists at forecast offices throughout the southeastern United States and Puerto Rico. Faculty also work with scientists at the National Center for Environmental Prediction in Washington, D.C. and the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Taking advantage of one of the historical strengths of the Department of Meteorology, faculty, students, and researchers outside of the University benefit from the many interactions produced as a result of the Institute.

The Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, headquartered at the University's research park, trains oceanographers and meteorologists in research focusing on the impact of tropical and mid-latitude ocean dynamics on global weather patterns. COAPS scientists specialize in climate prediction on scales of months to decades, air-sea interaction and modeling, and predictions of socioeconomic consequences of ocean-atmospheric variations.

The Center for Music Research is a leading unit in the application of computers to music psychology and to computer-based instruction in music. Computing facilities at the CMR include a local area network served by a Sun MicroSystems SparcStation ELC running Sun OS 4.1, with a 2 Gbyte hard disk drive and a cartridge tape drive. CMR also offers a certificate program in Computers in Music consisting of seven courses (16 semester hours).

The John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art located in Sarasota, Florida, is the designated State Museum of Florida. Recently the Legislature shifted administration of the museum to The Florida State University in recognition, in part, of the growing trend to maximize the educational value and potential of museums and, in part, to take advantage of the University's commitment to the arts. That potential is especially evident through this new association with the Sarasota community due to mutual strengths in the areas of the fine and performing arts and corrollary interests, such as the American circus. The Ringling Museum, the home of an internationally renowned art collection, occupies sixty acres of beautiful bay front property including the museum of art, the historic Asolo Theatre, and the Circus Museum. Together with The Florida State University Performing Arts Center, which lies adjacent to the art museum, it holds center stage for The Florida State University Ringling Center for the Cultural Arts which was created by the Florida Legislature in the year 2000.

The Florida State University Institute of Science and Public Affairs is a multifaceted institute of public service and applied research which helps government and private agencies solve problems ranging from hazardous waste disposal to conflict resolution.

Research centers within the institute are designed to respond to public and private sector needs. Specialists in the fields of biology, chemistry, geography, education, planning, public administration, physics, economics, law, and other areas carry out the University's public service responsibility through programs in education, training, and applied research. The overriding objective is to successfully apply resources-human and technical-to policy problems within the state of Florida.

The institute provides university students the opportunity to work on specific projects in institute centers under the supervision of experienced faculty and staff. These projects provide training for students in problem-solving environments. Government agencies and private sector organizations benefit from this dynamic source of trained and skilled personnel.

Since 1951, students and faculty of The Florida State University have benefited from its membership in Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU). ORAU is a consortium of eighty-seven colleges and universities and a management and operating contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. ORAU works with its member institutions to help their students and faculty gain access to federal research facilities throughout the country; to keep its members informed about opportunities for fellowship, scholarship, and research appointments; and to organize research alliances among its members. Through the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, the DOE facility that ORAU manages, undergraduates, graduates, postgraduates, as well as faculty, enjoy access to a multitude of opportunities for study and research. Students can participate in programs covering a wide variety of disciplines, including business, earth sciences, epidemiology, engineering, physics, pharmacology, ocean sciences, biomedical sciences, nuclear chemistry, and mathematics. Appointment and program length range from one month to four years. Many of these programs are especially designed to increase the numbers of underrepresented minority students pursuing degrees in science- and engineering-related disciplines. A comprehensive listing of these programs and other opportunities, their disciplines, and details on locations and benefits can be found in the Resource Guide, which is available on the World-Wide-Web at http://www.orau.gov/orise.htm, or by calling either of the contacts below. ORAU's Office of Partnership Development seeks opportunities for partnerships and alliances among ORAU's members, private industry, and major federal facilities. Activities include faculty development programs, such as the Junior Faculty Enhancement Awards and the Visiting Industrial Scientist Program, and various services to chief research officers. For more information about ORAU and its programs, contact Dr. Raymond E. Bye, Jr., ORAU Council Member, at 850-644-3347; contact Monnie E. Champion, ORAU Corporate Secretary, at 423-576-3306; or the ORAU Home Page at http://www.orau.gov.

A long-time member of the Southeastern Universities Research Association, The Florida State University also is a new member of a seven-university consortium, headed by the University of Tennessee, that serves as an advisory group to the new managers of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The group's mission is to work with ORNL's new not-for-profit management company, UT-Battelle, to set scientific and engineering research priorities for ORNL. The Florida State University joins UT, the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Duke University, Georgia Tech and North Carolina State University in this capacity.