Lab Resources

College of Public Health Nutrition Kitchen

The Department of Nutrition and Food Studies' new facilities in Peterson Hall include a state of the art 25 student capacity nutrition teaching kitchen.  The kitchen is furnished with multiple food preparation stations allowing students to participate in cooking and other food preparation activities.  Each station is equipped with stovetops, counter space, refrigeration, sinks, ovens, and tablets for viewing demonstrations and accessing the internet. The kitchen also provides a large demonstration platform with video recording capability allowing replay for each teaching kitchen station. 

View a 3D video of the nutrition kitchen here.

Nutrition kitchen in the Peterson Family Health Sciences Hall.

Human Nutrition Assessment Lab

The Human Nutrition Assessment Lab was established in 2014 to create a teaching environment and to serve as a resource for clinical research investigations dedicated to human nutrition experimentation. The lab provides an active learning and research environment for students, faculty, and professionals to develop, evaluate and utilize both traditional and cutting-edge nutritional assessment tools among various populations at the local, state, national and international levels.

The lab offers anthropometric, biochemical, and dietary tools to enable complete nutritional analysis. Capabilities include a dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) densitometer (Horizon A, Hologic) and bioelectric impedance analysis monitor (SC-331S, Tanita), food models (Nasco) and dietary analysis software (Nutritionist Pro, Axxya Systems) as well as a metabolic cart (QuarkRMR, Cosmed) for resting energy expenditure using indirect calorimetry and technical resources for biochemistry analysis. Space is also available for obtaining ethical consent and for conducting surveys and counselling sessions.

Learn more about the lab (pdf).

A person gets their nutrition assessed in the human nutrition assessment lab.

Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study Wet Lab

The Nutrition and Food Studies wet lab is located in the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study on the Fairfax Campus. It is a biosafety level 2 lab, providing space for cell culture work and basic food chemistry studies. The lab’s equipment includes three biosafety cabinets, a CO2 incubator, an inverted light microscope, a multi-mode plate reader, a spectrophotometer, and liquid nitrogen storage of cells. Shared laboratory facilities within the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study provide the opportunity to perform molecular biology techniques and confocal microscopy. Learn more about the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study.

A person studies a sample in the wet lab.

Shared Research Instrumentation Facility

The Shared Research Instrumentation Facility (SRIF) provides state-of-the-art, high-tech analytical instruments for conducting applied scientific research in the chemical and biochemical fields. SRIF’s selection of computer-controlled equipment is of the same high caliber as those found in advanced commercial and governmental laboratories. Chromatography equipment for food composition analysis is available through the Shared Research Instrumentation Facility, which is located on Mason’s Science and Technology campus. Learn more about SRIF.