Morrison, Black says, wanted her students to know all of the chemistry department's instruments, inside and out. "When an instrument would break, she would pull us out of our research for two or three days at a time to watch the repair people and to actually aid them," he says. Such intimate familiarity with the components and practical uses of scientific equipment has been a big advantage to Black, currently a doctoral student in a chemistry program at Northeastern University. In a recent course on the theory behind the analytical process of mass spectrometry, Black felt that he excelled because of his extensive use of mass spectrometers at Trinity. He states, "While other students who had come from big universities had a fairly good textbook knowledge of instrumentation, I actually had hands-on experience that I could apply to learning the concepts being taught."

   Black's extensive undergraduate exposure to the tools of the trade of professional researchers is not the exception but the rule for science majors at Trinity. Faculty members--whose research interests are diverse--fill Trinity's labs with sophisticated equipment not often seen in colleges of similar size. Practice using instruments is a given in science courses at Trinity because classes are small and everybody gets a turn. Moreover, opportunities for students to conduct research alongside professors--somewhat rare at the undergraduate level--are common at the College and often require daily or weekly use of the same instruments students are likely to encounter in graduate school or industry. Morrison notes that when she came to Trinity in the fall of 1997, she assumed she'd have to live without the cutting-edge equipment she'd become accustomed to in her work at a federal government laboratory. On the contrary, she says, "I was floored with the instrumentation here at Trinity."

Electron microscopes and more
Widely used in medicine, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, and aerospace engineering, electron microscopes

offer atomic and subatomic resolution. Valued at more than $2 million, Trinity's electron microscopes and supplementary equipment are among the most expensive and highly sophisticated instruments used by the College's students day in and day out. Two of the instruments--one located in the Albert C. Jacobs Life Sciences Center, the other in McCook --are transmission electron microscopes (TEMs), which use an electron beam that passes through ultra-thin samples to provide images of internal structures. Trinity also has a scanning electron microscope (SEM), which renders images of the surface structure of samples. In addition, Trinity has both an atomic force microscope (AFM) and a scanning tunneling microscope (STM), both of which use a probe that can be brought extremely close to samples in order to image their surface topography or chemistry.

   Students in the life sciences generally use electron microscopy to study cellular structure and function. Biology major Phuoc Nguyen '01, for example, uses the transmission electron microscope to count individual mitochondria in cells from the digestive tracts of male and female Gluphisia moths. Previous research conducted by Assistant Professor of Biology Scott Smedley has shown that male moths have a larger, longer ileum than females. This sexual dimorphism possibly facilitates the uptake of sodium through a drinking behavior performed only by the males. To test this theory, Nguyen's task is to determine whether structural differences related to sodium transport occur at the subcellular level. After examining ileal samples from male and female moths with the TEM, Nguyen used electron-activated film to capture the microscope's images for a permanent record. After she develops the film in a darkroom designed specifically for the TEM facility, she will be able to count the mitochondria as easily as someone might count the windows in a photograph of a house. Sodium transport is an energy-consuming process. Thus, if these male cells are indeed responsible for the observed uptake of the mineral, Nguyen predicts that she will find more mitochondria--which are energy producers--in the male versus the female ileal cells.

   Ann R. Lehman, manager of the electron microscopy facility, points out that students who learn to operate such sophisticated equipment as TEMs acquire a whole host of skills in the process, including mastery of the art of specimen preparation--a process that can take hours or days, depending upon the sample material--and the ability to interpret the images they see. Both biological and materials samples must be sliced or milled to make them thin enough for the TEM's electron beam to pass through. Because of their high water content, biological specimens must be prepared in a chemical fixation or snap freezing process, while non-organic samples are often specially coated to protect them from the damaging effects of electron bombardment. These processes, in turn, require additional instrumentation and offer further opportunities for students to learn new skills.

   Students who use Trinity's TEMs also learn to use such support instrumentation as a vacuum evaporator, which is used to give specimens a very light coat of carbon or a precious metal; an ion mill that can make samples as thin as a few millionths of a millimeter; and a number of tripod polishers, which are widely used by such corporations as IBM and Intel in the manufacture and failure analysis of silicon microchips. Familiarity with these devices is highly valued in the computer industry among others, notes Lehman. In general, she says, "microtechnique itself is very valuable out in the world." 

   Finally, Lehman notes, students using electron microscopes gain an understanding of the technology that makes such feats of engineering work. She says, "We teach enough about the instrument so that students are able to understand why they are operating it the way they are and how they can maximize the performance of this remarkable tool."

 Real-world applications
The instrument room on the first floor of the Clement Chemistry Building is the repository for a number of the department's special devices, which Trinity students often learn to use by applying them to real-world situations. Students in "Instrumental Methods of Chemical Analysis," a course team-taught by Morrison and Professor of Chemistry David E. Henderson, used liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry equipment to identify gunshot residue on the hands of someone who had recently fired a gun. Students have also used gas chromatography-mass spectrometers to study the levels of cocaine residue on paper currency. This sophisticated instrumentation is often combined in interfaced arrangements, and students must decide exactly how to use the equipment to achieve a desired result--for example, to identify a particular molecule or to quantify a compound. Says Morrison, "Using the sophisticated analytical tools at their disposal, students are developing the scientific methodology to answer real-world questions."

    One of the most exciting applications of Trinity's instrumentation in recent years directly benefited the Hartford community. In a grant-funded research project, begun in 1999, Henderson, Assistant Professor of Biology Hebe M. Guardiola-Diaz, and six students used an inductively coupled plasma emission spectrometer to analyze traces of lead in the soil of a vacant city lot. After cultivating a garden of Indian mustard, a plant that absorbs lead and thus cleanses the soil, the student researchers analyzed the soil again to insure it was safe for use. A few harvests later, the 1.2-acre site was clean enough to become a community garden. Students also used an electron microscope to study how lead was absorbed into the cells of the plants.

High-performance computing
The computer science department is home to one of Trinity's newest high-tech devices. In January, Assistant Professor of Computer Science Peter A. Yoon received the components of a Compaq multiprocessor computer, the first multiprocessor on campus. A typical personal computer (PC) has only one processor and is therefore limited in its capabilities. With eight Alpha processors working together (each of which is much faster than the type of processor found in an average PC), this computer will be able to solve large-scale, highly sophisticated mathematical problems that can't be solved by single-processor machines--at least not without taking weeks or months or years. Theoretically, such a computer could operate at a peak rate of 10 billion mathematical operations per second, and Yoon believes that Trinity may be the only small New England college with a computer of this type.

   This multiprocessor will enable Trinity's computer science department to offer new courses in high-performance computing. Students will gain first-hand programming experience in the technology that is widely used in Web search engines and complex simulations in the real world. Programming a multiprocessor is challenging, notes Yoon, because the programmer has to allocate the problem among the processors so the computer can operate at optimum efficiency.

Tools for building confidence
When an undergraduate uses a scanning electron microscope or x-ray crystallography equipment, he or she gains more than practical knowledge of instrumentation. So says Adam Orr '00, who majored in biology and who is currently studying terrestrial flatworms in Scotland and New Zealand through a Watson Fellowship. Orr, who worked on two interdisciplinary research projects during his junior and senior years at Trinity, says that being entrusted with such instrumentation gave him both a sense of responsibility and a great deal of confidence. "Although the professors are always there for advice and troubleshooting, there is a tremendous amount of freedom, and learning how to operate and maintain equipment becomes the student's responsibility," he says. "At times it was very intimidating to know that I was given full responsibility for an instrument worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it also did wonders for building confidence."

   Orr plans to pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience at Emory University in the fall. He believes there is a direct relationship between the opportunities he had to work with state-of-the-art equipment at Trinity and his success in both landing the Watson grant and in being accepted into every graduate program to which he applied. "The wealth of instrumentation at Trinity and the constant exposure to it--whether in labs or through personal research--is amazing," he says. "I feel extremely lucky to have chosen Trinity for undergraduate study. All my other options were large, well-respected universities, and during the decision process I thought that little Trinity would actually hinder my future plans in the sciences. I could not have been more wrong about that."

--Leslie Virostek 

Trinity student's research displayed in nation's capital

      This spring, Lafleur's striking images of ants and beetle pupae were displayed, along with a description of her research, on Capitol Hill. She was one of only 60 students from across the country to participate in a poster presentation session that is sponsored by the National Council on Undergraduate Research and is designed to impress legislators with the quality and importance of undergraduate research.

      This spring, Lafleur's striking images of ants and beetle pupae were displayed, along with a description of her research, on Capitol Hill. She was one of only 60 students from across the country to participate in a poster presentation session that is sponsored by the National Council on Undergraduate Research and is designed to impress legislators with the quality and importance of undergraduate research.