USU opens microscope lab

Utah State University cut the ribbon for a microscope lab in the Science Engineering Research Building Wednesday. The lab is open to students and researchers from any department.

It features a new environmental-scanning electron microscope, or an ESEM. The microscope scans material, which can be in a variety of states, and creates images of it. Scanned materials are put into a chamber, which allows for gaseous materials to be scanned also.

“We have a really nice new instrument,” said John Shervais, manager of the lab and geology professor. “This is state of the art. This really is about as good as they get right now in scanning electron microscopes.”

Space for the lab was provided by the College of Science and the renovation was paid for by university overhead. Major funding for the equipment was attained through faculty-awarded grants.

In the past, researchers would have to go to other universities to use an ESEM.

“It is something that we have needed for a long time,” Shervais said. “This is a very fundamental instrument for a range of different things.”

Students, both graduate and undergraduate, are encouraged to use the new microscope.

“We now have funding in place to support graduate students and undergraduate students to have, in essence, unlimited access and training to this facility right here,” said Mark McLellan, vice president for research at USU. “It is part of our commitment to blend and really accentuate the graduate training and the undergraduate research experience.”

Shervais said this is another opportunity for students to gain experience in research.

“Students are really the foot soldiers in the research effort. They are the ones who come out of the trenches and go into the machine gun fire,” he said. “They do the work.”

Shervais also said being able to use the microscope will make students more appealing to employers.

“I’ve had students use instruments that I’ve had and get jobs on the basis of the fact that they had that experience,” he said. “If they weren’t using that instrument, it’s like, ‘Well if you can do that, then we can teach you to use pretty much any of these things here.’”

Fen Ann Shen, technician for the microscope, said USU allowing students to use this microscope is a unique opportunity.

“A lot of universities don’t allow students to use new ones,” Shen said.

Shen will be in the lab full time to help both students and researches use the ESEM.

“You can’t run this type of facility without someone like Fenn Ann who really knows how to make it work,” Shervais said. “You can’t just come in and look at the manual and say, ‘Well I think I’ll try this.’ For one thing, you’ll break it, but it takes a long time to get to know how to get the most out of it.”

How often students will use the lab and equipment is unclear, but McLellan stressed that it is available to them and hope students will seize the opportunity.

— dahdahjm@gmail.com