Page 60 - Hormel Report 2021

60 | THE HORMEL INSTITUTE // UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA OPERATIONS DEPARTMENTS
Instrument Core Facility
Todd Schuster / Manager
The Instrument Core Facility operates and maintains the shared instruments at The Hormel Institute. We also instruct scientists in the use of these instruments to ensure they are used properly and safely. An important
new addition to our department is Tanner Conway, our newly-hired Core Technician. We also added several
new instruments, including the Nano Sight NS 300 which can analyze nanoparticles ranging in size from 10nm-1000nm, giving researchers important information on size distribution and concentration. We look forward to continuing to employ all of our Core Facility equipment to assist our researchers at The Hormel Institute.
Cryo-Electron Microscopy Facility
Janarjan Bhandari, Ph.D. / Manager
The Cryo-EM facility at The Hormel Institute houses the state-of-the-art Titan Krios cryo-electron micro- scope and a Tecnai Biotwin transmission electron microscope. We also have a wet lab fully dedicated to preparing samples for the electron microscopes. The cryo-electron microscope is one of the most powerful microscopes in the world. It is able to map the tiniest part of a protein at a near atomic resolution allowing our scientists to investigate the structural details and functions of a protein, which is crucial for designing new treatments and therapies. We recently upgraded our microscope system for faster data collection and we are in the process of upgrading the system with a better detector, which will allow us to provide service to external researchers.
Research Computing and Information Technology
Jeffrey McDonald, Ph.D. / Director
Research Support Services has a new name: Research Computing and Infor- mation Technology (RCIT). The new name aligns more closely with the support that the unit provides to the Institute. This year, we continued to modernize our infrastructure. The most impactful efforts were with the Institute’s networking. The networking has been completely overhauled
and modernized with new switching equipment, dedicated 10 GBE uplinks, integration into OIT’s network infrastructure and a new firewall man- agement system. In addition, all of the WIFI at the Institute was replaced and integrated into the University of Minnesota’s network. New storage has been deployed along with research comput- ing hardware for the Cryo-EM researchers. The executive conference room and the administra- tive conference rooms have been modernized and converted to zoom rooms.
FY21 ANNUAL REPORT