Education and Outreach

Our Mission

User training is at the core of our facility’s mission, and we commit a significant amount of staff effort to training users in the application of standard and advanced macromolecular crystallographic techniques, with a particular focus on challenging time-resolved, Laue crystallography.

Another aspect of our mission is to keep present users, prospective users, and the broader scientific community well informed about capabilities and unique aspects of the facility, core research and development activities, and important scientific findings by our users and staff. To this end, BioCARS staff members actively disseminate our own and collaborative research by publishing in widely read, peer-reviewed journals, by contributing book chapters and review articles, and by participating in national and international scientific conferences.

Tours

We give tours of the BioCARS facility frequently and to diverse groups of visitors ranging from members of the general public and high school students to University of Chicago alumni. In 2007, for example, more than 160 visitors toured our facility, most of them students.