Northwestern High Throughput Analysis Laboratory

We give you expertise and resources for large scale biology.


During the first two weeks of June we will begin a phased reopening of the core. During early phases we will be limiting occupancy to observe social distancing guidelines. In addition, face masks and gloves will be required will in the core. Additional guidelines are posted on NUcore. Please contact Sara Dunne, the core manager, with questions or concerns.

Projects involving massively parallel experiments are opening unexpected frontiers in basic science and accelerating development of new medicines.   Doing them well and getting useful data analysis usually requires specialized expertise and a suite of pricey equipment.  This isn’t possible for many laboratories, especially in academia.   We’re here to change that.

Northwestern’s High Throughput Analysis Lab (NU-HTA) has grown over the last decade into a premier open resource for this kind of research.  We’re committed to providing Chicago’s life science community an affordable way to set up, run, gather data and perform analysis from tens to tens of thousands of parallel experiments using up-to-date instruments.  This includes drug discovery research, biochemistry, cell and organismal biology, functional genomic screening, and synthetic genetic analysis. Proteins, nucleic acids, small model organisms, and microbial strains are things we work with.  We have excellent in-house tissue culture, and we produce and use lentivirus particles.  We screen compound libraries, which you can peruse under the “library screening” tab.

NU-HTA will do experiments for you.   We regularly generate preliminary data to figure out if an idea is workable, and we’re happy to discuss project development.   With training, you can also use most of our gear yourself: check it out under the “equipment” tab.

The NU-HTA team is:  Chi-Hao, Matt, Sara and Michael.   You can find out more about us (and our expertise) on the “People” page.

Here are just few of the things we can do:

  • Macromolecular binding, biochemical, and cell-based assays
  • High content screening with widefield or confocal optics
  • Nanoliter liquid handling up to 1536-well density
  • Whole-plate kinetic assays (ion currents, GPCR signaling)
  • Compound library screening
  • CRISPR/Cas9 screening (multiplexed libraries)
  • Analysis of large data sets
  • Fluorescence Thermal Shift assay (measures protein melting)
  • Complex liquid handling work flows