UNM Campus Facility & Resources

Below are some of the departments, facilities and campus resources that may be relevant to new hires. Information listed is not exhaustive, rather a general overview of what each provides. To learn more, click on the respective heading.

UNM Center for Advanced Computing (CARC)

New faculty hires will have access to desktop computers with numerical and statistical software, in-house servers supported by Central IT, and supercomputing facilities at the UNM Center for Advanced Computing (CARC). CARC supports high-performance and data-intensive computing by the entire UNM community. Resources available to support this project include the 300-node/2400-core Wheeler compute cluster (ideal for running multiple realizations of stochastic models), the 32-node Xena NVIDIA GPU cluster, and the Taos condo computer cluster. These systems host a wide range of software packages for use by the diverse community of UNM researchers, including traditional scientific computing applications, state-of-the-art data analytics and machine learning systems, and interfaces such as Jupyter, R, and Parallel Matlab for new application domains in the long-tail of science. This allows CARC systems to support the broad range of UNM research computing needs from single-node data analysis to capacity HPC to complex big data and scientific computing applications.

In addition, CARC and UNM Libraries host a VMWare/Cisco/Netapp virtual machine infrastructure that provides support for custom research applications and data storage/management. CARC PI's augment this system with the computer, storage, and software resources needed by their application. PI-focused IT personnel administer the deployed platform, and CARC and Libraries personnel manage the underlying infrastructure, including mirroring hosted VMs and storage to remote data centers when necessary. The development of institutional support for controlled unclassified research in this platform is also under development.

These systems are housed in CARC's dedicated research data center with 2 UPS systems and 3 Liebert AC systems. Together they provide 270 kVa of UPS capacity and 70 tons of dedicated cooling, maintaining a time window for riding out transient power loss or cleanly shutting down systems in the event of longer outages.

Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies

Center for Biomedical Engineering – UNM School of Engineering

Laboratories
The Center for Biomedical Engineering (CBME) is located on the main campus of the University of New Mexico. CBME occupies 15,000 sq. ft. of lab space in the Centennial Engineering Center. Laboratories are equipped with the following:

  • An organic synthesis facility with hoods and all necessary glassware including schlenk lines.
  • SpectraMax M5 and SpectraMax M2 Multi-Mode Microplate Readers from Molecular Devices. Detection modes include: UV-Vis absorbance, fluorescence intensity, luminescence, time-resolved fluorescence, and fluorescence polarization.
  • Lambda 35 UV/Vis Spectrophotometer from Perkin Elmer with programmable temperature control.
  • Agilent 1100 HPLC System from Agilent Technologies with a diode array detector, a column heater
    and an autosampler for analytical characterization of proteins and OPEs.
  • Static and dynamic light scattering (HELIOS II and DynaPro) instrumentation from Wyatt Technology.
  • pH meter, analytical balance, centrifuge, and facilities for preparation of protein solutions.

UNM Health Sciences Center (HSC)

UNM Health Sciences Center (HSC) has a national, roadmap flow cytometry-based high throughput screening (HTS) center for drug discovery (UNMCMD) representing a one of a kind sustainable facility (technologically, financially, architecturally) that has national and international impact. In addition to its innovative and pioneering role in flow cytometry, it is the most prominent integrated HTS facility in the world specializing in flow cytometry.

  • UNM Radiology Image Processing Lab (RIPL): The Radiology Image Processing Laboratory (RIPL) at UNM was established with the goal of facilitating translational research through the provision of state-of-the-art MRI image processing tools for the intramural community. The laboratory is focused on quantitative image analysis and 3D printing for both preclinical and clinical research applications.
  • The shared fluorescence microscopy core: is located in the Cancer Research Facility (CRF 212), and has several microscopes (a Zeiss 510META, a Zeiss Two-photon Confocal, and a Olympus DSU spinning disk confocal), and several workstations (Fujitsu Esprimo, Fujitsu, Siemens, and Dell Precision, respectively) with state-of-the-art software (like Zeiss AxioObserver®, MBF Bioscience’s Stereoinvestigator®, Neurolucida®, Zen® etc.) available for use.
  • Animal facilities: The UNM HSC maintains a 23,000-sq. ft. animal research facility (ARF), directed by Dr. Kevin O’Hair, the DVM, who is board-certified by the College of Laboratory Animal Medicine (ACLAM). ARF is fully accredited by the Association for the Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AALAC) and is in compliance with all Federal, State and Local laws pertaining to animal welfare and laboratory animal research. The ARF is maintained as a specific pathogen free (SPF) facility essential for current, state of the science research, and contains specialized barrier facilities for breeding laboratory mice. The ARF also provides technical and veterinary support for all educational and research projects utilizing laboratory animals. 

HSC Clinical Research Facilities

UNM Memory and Aging Center: The Memory and Aging Center was established in 2016 under the direction of Gary Rosenberg, MD, to specifically help patients with various types of neurologic conditions that affect cognition and behavior, with an emphasis on disorders that affect older individuals. This center is primarily devoted to Alzheimer's and related dementia research and treatment in New Mexico or the Mountain West region. They recruit healthy subjects and patients interested in participating in clinical research. The center banks imaging, clinical and biomarker datasets and provide clinical samples to UNM investigators interested in dementia research.

The Clinical Translational Science Center (CTSC) is a shared resource facility with an aim to fill in the gap between basic medical research and clinical research. The CTSC T1 laboratory, in the basement of the CTSC building, directly across from the FH, is a shared resource facility with a Nanodrop 2000 (Thermo Scientific), and a Viia7 Real Time PCR Machine (Life Technologies), two work stations (Dell laptop with Nanodrop 2000/2000c software, and a Dell desktop with Viia7 software Version 1.2.2, respectively), as well as several bench spaces and laboratory tools available for use anytime.

Translational Informatics Divison - UNM Health Sciences Center

The Translational Informatics Division (TID) is housed in the Innovation Discovery & Training Complex (IDTC) together with the UNM Center for Molecular Discovery (UNMCMD). TID is part of the UNM Health Sciences Center, including the School of Medicine, UNM Hospital, and the New Mexico Cancer Center, an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. Founded in 2012 by Tudor Oprea (as Division Chief) and by then Chair of Internal Medicine (DoIM) Pope Moseley, TID aims to integrate translational informatics services in support of clinical and basic research within DoIM. TID members are formally trained across multiple disciplines including medicine, chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, informatics, computer science and engineering. As the largest department in the University of New Mexico (over 260 Faculty, across 17 Divisions and Centers), DoIM provides direct access to clinician-scientists with various medical specialties and research interests. TID has also maintained collaborations with UNM's Computer Science, Mathematics and Statistics, and Chemistry and Chemical Biology departments, and with the two national laboratories based in New Mexico: Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory. This setting combines world-class biomedical research, clinical care, education and community service, and is ideally suited for translational research such as this project.

TID's software cyberinfrastructure includes various free and commercial tools efficiently addressing a wide range of computational tasks. For any such tool, practical usability requires suitable hardware, prerequisite configurations, and expertise for effective use. A few of the enterprise server components readily available are: PostgreSql, MySql, Tomcat, Jena. For statistics, data analysis, visualization and machine learning: R, TibcoSpotfire, Weka, Tableau, MKS-Simca, and Mesa Analytics. For cheminformatics: ChemAxon, OpenEye, RDKit, OpenBabel, Leadscope. For web development: Django, RShiny, Lift. OSs in current use include: CentOS, Ubuntu, SuSE, Mac OSX and Windows. Programming languages include: Perl, Python, R, Java, Scala, JavaScript, PHP and C++. Other (licensed, not open-access) resources include Truven MarketScan (health informatics database), Cerner HealthFacts (deidentified electronic medical records database) and Statista.com (statistics from a variety of areas, including consumer reports, pharmaceutical, etc.). TID has access to a large variety of scientific enterprise hardware and software, as listed above. Note the digital assets we maintain, listed in Table 1. A variety of custom client tools provide access to online resources via programmable-web APIs (e.g. REST).

Center for Molecular Discovery - UNM Health Sciences Center

Compound Libraries: The Prestwick Chemical Library (www.prestwickchemical.fr) contains 1520 small molecules, 100% approved drugs . Compounds were selected for chemical and pharmacological diversity as well as bioavailability and safety in humans. They can be used for repurposing in clinical trials. The Microsource SPECTRUM Collection consists of 2560 compounds providing a range of biological activities and structural diversity (www.msdiscovery.com/spectrum.html). The Tocriscreen Collection of 1120 biologically active compounds (https://www.rndsystems.com/products/tocriscreen-total_2884) was chosen as a starting point for pathway identification in cell-based phenotypic targets. Selleckchem L1700 contains 2100 bioactive compounds including inhibitors, natural products, chemotherapeutic agents that are structurally and cell permeable; 212 recent on patent drugs have been obtained from MedChemExpress.