COSMIC is located in a suite of rooms on a ground floor wing of the James Clerk Maxwell Building.

One suite of laboratories are equipped with state-of-the-art diode-pumped solid state (DPSS) lasers coupled with ultrafast mode-locked Ti:Sapphire lasers for femtosecond and picosecond applications. Tuning across the ultraviolet to near infrared range is obtained by second and third harmonic generation and Optical Parametric Oscillator units. These systems, coupled with several upright and inverted microscopes enable a variety of activities based on combinations of:

• Confocal imaging
• Multi-photon imaging
• Spinning disk confocal imaging
• Single molecule imaging
• Florescence lifetime spectroscopy and microscopies (FLIM)
• Fluorescence resonance energy transfer imaging (FRET)
• Time-resolved spectroscopy

A further suite of laboratories is dedicated to the development of new technologies and instrumentation. These facilities include several open-plan microscopes providing convenient optical access. These suites are ideal environments for short-lead time testing of ideas and pre-commercial systems. Instrumentation currenly under development includes:

• novel laser tweezer systems
• fluorescence correlation microscopy
• optical spectroscopy under extreme conditions
• optical microscopy under shear

The MVF provides a dedicated computational infrastructure for COSMIC. It consists of a suite of dual-processor graphics workstations (IBM Intellistations) and a 16-node parallel supercomputer.

• A dedicated computational facility to study the electronic structure, properties and dynamics of complex molecular systems at an atomistic, nano- and meso-scale level, thus underpinning and extending the research capability of COSMIC and its potential to provide leadership in molecular and mesoscale science.
• To develop a unique environment within COSMIC to support coordinated experimental and computational research in key technical focus areas of fundamental and applied science. A related objective is to attract computational physicists, chemists, biologists and materials scientists from industry and academia to COSMIC to interact directly with the experimental programme.

There are several different optical tweezers systems currently available within COSMIC. These systems include a user-friendly 'turn-key' system on a commercial microscope as well as research and development systems on open-bench microscopes.

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COSMIC offers on-site access to sample preparation facilities equipped with general purpose fume cupboards:

• dedicated animal cell culture facilities
• dedicated fungal cell culture facilities
• bench-top autoclaves
• centrifuges
• incubators

Staff within COSMIC hold frequent business meetings in a dedicated Meeting room soon to be equipped with video-conference facilities. The room is also used for regular seminars.