Supporting Facilities

The Physics Department administers two major university-wide facilities for the Boston University community: the Electronics Design Facility and the Scientific Instruments Facility.

Electronics Design Facility
The Electronics Design Facility (EDF) designs and builds advanced electronics in support of research science and education. The EDF assists the BU community with all levels of electronics design, from small circuits to large systems. Services include circuit design, consultation, assembly, PCB layout, programming, simulation, parts procurements, equipment repair and technical training. Since 1986, the EDF has contributed to a broad range of research efforts at Boston University and other area institutions.

The EDF builds custom biomedical instrumentation for the Framingham Heart Study, the Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, the Laboratory of Cognitive Neurobiology and the Beth-Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland makes extensive use of electronics developed by the EDF. The ATLAS and CMS detectors use data acquisition systems built by the EDF.

Scientific Instruments Facility
The Scientific Instruments Facility (SIF) specializes in the highly accurate machining and fabrication of various types of experimental hardware in order to meet the needs of various University departments. The SIF has been a part of the Physics Department since 1987, but caters to all departments within the university, and has designed and built telescopes, ultra high vacuum chambers, infrared cameras, robotic lobsters and even mazes for ferrets.

The SIF works with stainless steel, titanium, aluminum, nickel, copper, ceramic and a wide variety of plastics. The facility has the ability to turn ideas and rough sketches into functional scientific hardware. The SIF employs a staff of senior experimental machinists with many years of experience in CNC, as well as manual machining, CAD/CAM programming, welding and fabrication. Services are available to anyone in need of custom-machined parts or new and original scientific hardware. The facility is dedicated to providing timely, cost-effective and practical solutions to anyone’s hardware needs.

In the past year, the SIF finished up the BUSAT project, a student designed and built satellite. They were also involved with facilitating satellite construction for the LCI project through the Center for Space Physics (CSP), which contracted with the Air Force research labs to design an energetic particle collector for a scientific research satellite. Another of the shops’ projects is the continuing fabrication of parts for IMAGER, an ongoing CSP project. In addition, they have done numerous smaller jobs for departments throughout the University, including Photonics, Physics, Boston Medical Center, Biomedical Engineering, Biology, Chemistry, Astronomy, Mechanical Engineering, Psychology, Materials Science, Earth Science and the BU Bio Lab.

The Student Training Center, which exists within the Scientific Instrument Facility, began teaching a 9 week class in the spring of 2008 which has been very well received. They offer the class each semester and in the summer. The objective of the Student Training Center is to teach doctoral science candidates the basics of mechanical drafting and design, and to demonstrate to them how a modern CNC machine shop operates, so that they may more effectively interact with such shops for their future custom scientific hardware needs. At present, about 50 students have completed the program, and the waiting list to get into the class is 2 to 3 semesters.

Research Computation Facility
The Physics Research Computation Facility, directed by Guoan Hu, provides systems support for departmental servers, and assistance with workstations and personal computers to our extensive group of faculty, staff and student users. Hu also helps to configure and maintain computer clusters and servers for research groups within the department. Our Systems Analyst, Richard Laskey, has developed our department website and its underlying systems, which includes our departmental database and its related extensions. Laskey has also made progress in media and social networking alongside departmental computer support.

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