In January 2006 the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s Biomolecular Ultracentrifuge Facility became the fifth facility in the world to obtain an Aviv AU-FDS system (the others are at Cambridge University (UK), the University of Maryland, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and the University of New Hampshire). The new technology is particularly exciting because the AU-FDS opens up analytical ultracentrifugation to the world of tiny sample amounts and impure mixtures, as well as many other novel applications. Given the broad and diverse interests in macromolecular interactions found in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the acquisition of the AU-FDS system gives our faculty, post-docs and students unparalleled opportunities to the study the biochemistry and cell biology of complex macromolecular assemblages.