The HEAL Service Center in the College of Health at Lehigh University provides accessible, state-of-the-art mass spectrometry and analytical support to faculty, academic partners, and industry.
Lehigh University’s College of Health is proud to announce the official launch of the Health and Environmental Assessment Laboratory (HEAL) Service Center. Situated in the state-of-the-art Health, Science, and Technology (HST) building, this university shared core facility is designed to be a powerhouse of molecular analysis, providing real-world solutions at the complex intersection of environment and human health.
Occupying a part of the massive 36,000-square-foot collaborative laboratory space, the HEAL Service Center offers an open-concept environment where innovation thrives. As a premier service center for the greater Lehigh Valley and beyond, the facility provides internal and external partners with long-term, reliable access to high-value instrumentation without the burden of independent equipment management.
“What excites me most about the HEAL Service Center is its potential to make high-resolution molecular analysis accessible to a broader community of researchers,” said Gabrielle String, Assistant Professor in the Department of Population Health and faculty lead of the HEAL Service Center. “This kind of access is essential if we want to accelerate discoveries that link environmental conditions to human health in data-driven ways.”
At the heart of the center’s mission is its professional staff, including a research scientist PhD-level expert who provides dedicated operational support. This small team does more than just operate machinery; they serve as true collaborators who assist at every stage of the research pipeline. This includes:
For prospective faculty, the HEAL Service Center acts as a vital resource to strengthen research capacity and help faculty members compete for major grants. For prospective students, the lab offers a unique environment for student mentoring and hands-on training. Students work alongside professional staff to master advanced mass spectrometry techniques, gaining real-world experience in detecting everything from metabolites to thousands of proteins from a single sample.
“There's no substitute for hands-on experience with processing samples, troubleshooting methods, and tackling research questions. Working alongside students in the HEAL Service Center, I get to watch them go from learning the fundamentals of mass spectrometry to independently interpreting complex data.” says Abe Moghaddam. “That kind of training is what prepares them for careers where science actually matters.” Beyond student training, the HEAL Service Center serves as a strategic asset for faculty seeking external funding. Center staff can assist investigators with experimental design, preliminary data generation, and analytical method documentation, providing the scientific foundation that strengthens grant applications.
The center is strategically located just one hour from both Philadelphia and New York City, making it a convenient destination for external customers and industry partners who need to process biological or environmental samples quickly without the logistics of long-distance shipping. Whether it is a small-scale quantification project or a discovery-driven untargeted metabolomics study, the HEAL Service Center provides the precise data necessary to link environmental exposures to molecular-level changes in the body.
“The HEAL Service Center is more than just a lab; it’s a collaborative ecosystem,” says Won Choi, Associate Dean for Research & Graduate Education in the College of Health. By centralizing and making this resource available, we are empowering investigators from various disciplines to achieve their scientific goals while training the next generation of health researchers.
The HEAL Service Center is equipped to analyze a broad range of chemical contaminants and biological molecules across various environmental and human health matrices, including water, wastewater, runoff, soil, dust, airborne particulate samples, and biological specimens such as plasma, urine, and tissue. The facility offers detection sensitivity down to trace levels for both targeted and untargeted screenings across environmental, metabolomic, and proteomic applications.
Specific areas of analysis include:
The center's high-resolution instrumentation, a Thermo Fisher Vanquish LC coupled to a Q Exactive Orbitrap Mass Spectrometer, is purpose-built for this breadth of analysis. Researchers can pursue targeted quantification of known compounds or conduct discovery-driven untargeted screening to identify unexpected chemicals, metabolites, or proteins, ultimately linking environmental exposures to measurable, molecular-level changes in human health.
Service Request Contact: HEAL Service Center Email: inhealt@lehigh.edu
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