The Biotechnology Laboratory Instrumentation (BITC 2411) course has lectures and laboratory practice units. For this fall 2019 semester, in the unit 7B, students were asked to determine the amount of caffeine in different commercially available beverages. Students brought beverages, processed them, and prepared them following the guidelines in the laboratory manual. Students also prepared the High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) machine and run their samples against known concentrations of caffeine standards.

The results came out so good and reasonable that the instructor suggested to his students to write up a manuscript and publish their results in the journal of Laboratory Chemical education. The manuscript in preparation is titled: “Determination of Caffeine Content by HPLC in Beverages” This is an indication that the ACC Biotechnology program is designed to provide its students with more hands-on experience in instrumentation and separation science. The program gives students better opportunities to enhance their oral and written communication skills, to practice key analytical and chemical separation skills. Above all, the Biotechnology Laboratory Instrumentation allows students to get their works out to the scientific community through peer-review publications.