GGC currently maintains a PerkinElmer Elan DRC-e Inductively-Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS). The instrument is located in Building H, room 1133, and is utilized routinely by faculty and students for research and educational purposes. Dr. Kathryn Zimmerman currently supervises maintenance, operation and troubleshooting associated with the instrument.

The ICP-MS can detect very low concentrations (ppt) of metals and some non-metals by ionizing the sample in an electrically conductive plasma and then separating and quantifying sample ions using a mass spectrometer. GGC undergraduate research projects have utilized the ICP-MS to provide elemental analyses for a variety of matrices including food and beverages, freshwater and marine environmental samples, meteorites, biodiesel combustion products, freshwater organismal tissues, dopamine polymers from natural sources, and metal-binding proteins and collagens.