In chemistry Prof. Murray Johnston's campus lab, a mass spectrometer is used to analyze samples of proteins, DNA, synthetic polymers and other complex materials, many of them supplied by collaborators from other universities, who can study the resulting data as it appears on a computer screen.

Such shared experimentation is not unusual--except that Johnston's collaborators sometimes are miles away from UD, viewing the analysis and the data through an Internet-based "collaboratory." Johnston and the research team that set up the web-based lab have written a case study on the project, which was published in the August issue of the American Chemical Society journal, Analytical Chemistry.

The journal article, which describes the University's first year of experience with remote experimentation using a MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer connected to the Internet, was co-authored by Johnston, UD chemistry graduate student Frederick J. Cox and Gregory J. Forte, Dean C. Nairn, Richard S. Sacher and Anita Z. Schwartz, all of UD Information Technologies, along with Akos Vertes, a chemistry professor at George Washington University.

UD's interest in remote experimentation was sparked by a National Science Foundation chemical research instrumentation grant that provided funds for a mass spectrometer that could be used by researchers at George Washington and Drexel universities in collaboration with UD. The instrument was installed in Lammot du Pont Lab in early 1999, Johnston says.

"After we began working with it, we decided that, instead of our colleagues always having to come here to do the work, we should try to operate it in a web-based way," he says. The University's information-technology specialists and Cox solved what Johnston calls "several tricky problems," and the team conducted its first remote experiment in January 2000.

Scientists who want to analyze a sample with the mass spectrometer send it to the UD lab, where the material is prepared for analysis, placed on a special metal plate and inserted into the instrument. While the machine does its work, the scientists can log on to the Internet from their off-campus locations and watch the analysis on two computer screens--one showing a video of the analysis process itself, and the other showing the data being generated. They even can control how the instrument operates.

This kind of web-based lab, equipped with specialized scientific instruments, will become more and more common, Johnston predicts, providing researchers and students at remote sites with access to sophisticated and expensive equipment that otherwise is not readily available. Remote operation also can be used to enhance classroom teaching, and Johnston says he will incorporate it into an undergraduate course in the spring.

"As analytical chemists, we see evidence of a networked community all around us," the research team writes in the journal article. "We search the web for citations and other reference material, we use e-mail to communicate with friends and colleagues, we evaluate data and co-author papers through the exchange of files. In our offices, homes and hotel rooms, we are well connected to the outside world. But can the same be said when we enter the laboratory?

"The approach we have adopted for remote experimentation is easy to implement, effective and applicable to a wide range of analytical instrumentation."

--Neil Thomas, AS '76