The Center for Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry(CSIB) on the University of California, Berkeley campus, is an analytical facility established as a University education, research, training and service unit beginning in January 2000.  Facility operations are overseen by an operations manager and spectroscopist (Paul Brooks), the faculty director (Todd Dawson), associate directors (Ron Amundson and Allen Goldstein) and associate researcher (Stefania Mambelli), and a steering committee.  Student assistants help in daily operations and administrative support is provided the Department of Integrative Biology.

The center provides high precision, state-of-the-art, instrumentation for analyzing the stable isotope composition of a diverse array of materials (e.g., plant and animal tissues samples, soils, atmospheric gasses, water, etc.) as well as space for purifying, extracting and preparing sample material for analysis.  The center also serves as a focal point for research and training for many of our programs at U.C. Berkeley (e.g., in Biology, Ecology, Paleontology, Anthropology, Geography, Chemsitry, Atmospheric and Soil sciences). The specialized equipment housed in the facility serves a broad range of student, post-doc and faculty needs in the sciences both on and off campus.  At present, 11 Berkeley faculty and over 20 post-doctoral and student researchers are using the center's services.  In addition, there are several off-campus users including the U.S. Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service.

Located in rooms 1138 and 1140 of the Valley Life Sciences Building (Map of the Facility), the Center for Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry provides the campus community with the resources to provide stable isotope analyses performed by the lab's 2 gas phase isotope ratio mass spectrometers (IRMS); these mass spectrometers have the capabilities of analyzing the isotopic composition of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur in biological and geological samples, gasses (biogenic and atmospheric) and water.  In addition, to the instrument laboratory, the center houses a fully equipped sample extraction and preparation laboratory for handling a full range of sample types.