It is my pleasure to welcome users to the newly established Physical Biochemistry Instrumentation Facility at Indiana University, Bloomington. Over the past several years there has been a rapid increase on our campus of research into the structures, stabilities and interactions of biomolecules. This new Facility has been established to facilitate and encourage these research endeavors and to provide a centralized resource for training and education in modern physical biochemistry. We hope that other research organizations in the region will also benefit from the Facility.

The Physical Biochemistry Instrumentation Facility would not exist without the strong support of Faculty and administrators at Indiana University. I want to thank Carl Bauer, Chair of the Interdisciplinary Biochemistry program, for prioritizing the support of this Facility and Dean Kumble Subbaswamy, Chemistry Chair David Clemmer, and former Biology Chair Jeffrey Palmer for providing the funds for hiring our new Facility Manager, Dr. Todd Stone, who is doing an outstanding job setting up this valuable resource. David Clemmer has also allocated Chemistry Department space for the Facility and Biology Chair Beth Raff has offered support for the future relocation of the Facility into the Multidisciplinary Sciences Building, where it will best serve the interests of the growing IU biochemistry community. Many IU faculty members (past and present) have written shared instrumentation grants and/or contributed from their own research funds to allow the purchase of state-of-the-art biophysical instrumentation. I wish to thank the following individuals for dedicating their time and efforts: Martha Oakley, Andrew Feig, John Richardson, David Daleke, Jim Drummond, Don Burke, Jay Tang, Yves Brun, Peter Cherbas, Cheng Kao, Jeff Zaleski, and Andy Ellington. Extramural funding for the Facility instruments has come from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, with intramural matching funds from Research and the University Graduate School (RUGS) and the Departments of Chemistry and Biology.

Last, but by no means least, I want to thank the several generations of graduate students and postdoctoral associates who have already made a number of exciting discoveries using the Facility instruments. It is my hope that the Physical Biochemistry Instrumentation Facility will contribute to the educational experience and joy of discovery by present and future students and postdocs as well as encouraging new collaborative interactions between labs.

Martin J. Stone, Facility Director