The new Science Building between Gee Lake and the Student Recreation Center opened for students and faculty in January 2006. The $28 million facility features a domed planetarium-one of few on a Texas university campus. Additionally, the science building will provide
students and faculty in physics, chemistry, biology, agricultural sciences, and computer science with the equipment needed for advanced research.

The Science Building is also home to a new state-of-the-art planetarium, with a 40-foot dome and a Digistar 3 all digital projection system which fills the dome with sights and sounds beyond imagination. The planetarium's 87 reclined seats immerse the audience in a space environment filling their vision and appearing to take them beyond the confines of the Earth.

Most of the research activities will take place in the new Science Building on the campus of A&M Commerce. The Departments of Chemistry and Physics are located in this building along with the new planetarium. The new science building is well equipped with modern instrumentation for research. One of the objectives of the REU program is to introduce participants to the operation of equipment used in modern research relating to Chemistry and Surface Science. Some of the major research instruments and facilities are summarized below:

Department of Chemistry:

• Varian 400 MHz NMR Spectrometer
• Thermo/Nicolet FT-IR Spectrometers
• OLIS 15 and 17 UV-Vis & CD Spectrophotometers
• Shimadzu Absorbance and Fluorescence Spectrophotometers
• TA Thermal Gravimetric Analysis Equipment
• Shimadzu GC/Mass Spectrometer
• Shimadzu & Dionex High Performance Liquid Chromatographs
• LICOR DNA Sequencer & Biotechnology Laboratory

Department of Physics:

• X-ray Fluorescence
• X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy
• Super computers