Lake Superior State University Partners with Agilent to Launch Cannabis Center of Excellence

Lake Superior State University (LSSU, Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan) announced a strategic partnership with Agilent Technologies (Santa Clara, California) to facilitate education and research in cannabis chemistry and analysis through the LSSU Cannabis Center of Excellence (CoE). According to the press release, the CoE is a state-of-the-art facility sponsored by Agilent and aimed at establishing a convergence of education and research across the sciences related to the rapidly expanding cannabis industry.

“This new strategic partnership is going to focus on the serious intellectual scientific inquiry of cannabis,” said Dr. Rodney Hanley, LSSU President. “Our graduates will meet the demand for qualified analytical chemists in both the scientific and cannabis communities.”

The planned focus of the LSSU Cannabis CoE will be training undergraduate students as job-ready chemists, experienced in multimillion-dollar instrumentation and modern techniques. Students will be using Agilent's scientific instruments-ranging from ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) and gas chromatography (GC) systems to inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometers (ICP-MS) and microwave plasma atomic emission spectrometers (MP-AES), among others-in their coursework and in faculty-mentored undergraduate research.

“The LSSU Cannabis Center of Excellence, sponsored by Agilent was created to provide a platform for our students to be at the forefront of the cannabis analytics industry,” said Dr. Steve Johnson, Dean of the College of Science and the Environment. “The instrumentation available is rarely paralleled at other undergraduate institutions. The focus of the cannabis program is to provide our graduates with the analytical skills necessary to move successfully into the cannabis industry.”

“Agilent is proud to sponsor the LSSU Cannabis Center of Excellence,” said Steven Gagliardi, Agilent’s Senior Director of Laboratory Solutions Sales. “The strong program that LSSU has developed, combined with Agilent’s innovative instrumentation, is sure to cultivate industry-leading analytical chemists in this fast-growing area of cannabis research.”

For more information, visit www.lssu.edu/school-physical-sciences/cannabis-chemistry/.