This page serves as an entrance to the Birge lab facilities housed in the Chemistry building at the University of Connecticut (shown below).
Our group is involved in organic chemistry, molecular biology, biophysics and spectroscopy. The organic lab is used primarily for the synthesis of chromophore analogs. The molecular biology lab focuses on the preparation and biophysical characterization of novel protein variants. The spectroscopy labs focus on characterization of the spectral nature of our variant molecules.
Our group owns separate spectrometers optimized for coverage in the microwave (1 - 40 GHz), THz (5 - 100 cm-1), Far IR (100 - 400 cm–1), infrared (400 - 4000 cm-1), near infrared (4000 - 8000 cm-1), visible (400 - 700 nm) and ultraviolet (100 - 400 nm). We also have time resolved capabilities in the THz, infrared and visible regions, with temporal resolutions in the infrared (100 - 4000 cm-1) of 1 microsecond and in the visible (480 - 640 nm) of 36 femtoseconds.