Centers and Facilities

VCU's Department of Biology is housed within the Eugene P. and Lois E. Trani Center for Life Sciences, which supports faculty and student research with modern laboratories and high-end technology.

For example, the department manages the greenhouse facility, an aquatics facility with numerous freshwater and marine tanks, and an animal facility maintained and supervised by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. In addition, we have a state-of-the-art imaging center with top-of-the-line microscopes maintained by biology faculty.

Students and faculty in the department also have access to a number of centers and multi-user laboratories on campus, which provide cutting-edge technology:

• Mass Spectrometry Center: Located adjacent to the Trani Center, the center provides additional support for proteomics and biotechnology research
• Instrumentation Facility: This facility in the nearby Department of Chemistry has resources for biomarker identification and environmental chemistry
• University Core Laboratories: The university maintains several core laboratories that provide access to genomics and  lipidomics analyses as well as high-performance computing resources

Faculty and students in the department also engage in transdisciplinary research through collaborations with centers around the university, such as:

• Massey Cancer Center
• Rice Rivers Center
• Center for Environmental Studies