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The new Basic Sciences and Biomedical Engineering building
by Jacqueline Couillard
A little natural light and some teamwork do a lot to stimulate people. At least that's the idea behind the architecture of the new Basic Sciences and Biomedical Engineering Building, expected to be open by fall. About 500 people, including around 70 Academic Health Center investigators and numerous researchers, are slated to move into the building between June 2 and July 1, said Sally Palm, of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, who is one of four administrators helping with the move.
The new building, on the corner of Washington Avenue South and Church Street Southeast, has a research wing and an office wing connected by a large atrium. Currently, all entrances to the building are locked. The building's interior will be more accessible after faculty and staff move in so that students can visit their professors, said Professor David Hamilton, who played a key role in facilitating construction of the new building during his time as head of what is now the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroanatomy. The research wing and the tunnel connecting the building to Coffman Memorial Union will remain locked for environmental health and safety reasons, though, Hamilton said.
"We thought we were going to move in last December, but there were commissioning problems," said Hamilton, who will have an office and lab space in the new building. Previous problems with the ventilation system are fixed now, Hamilton said.
Part of the ventilation problem, however, created another issue for those involved with the building. The malfunctioning ventilation system blew open the main doors to the building, facing Coffman Union, and some people entered the building and explored the sunlit and carpeted atrium with its tables and chairs. The visitors, who probably thought the building was open since it had already been dedicated, had to be ushered out to comply with construction laws, Hamilton said. He emphasized that new buildings often have problems with ventilation or other aspects of the structure to be worked out before the building's denizens or the public in general can legally enter.
Despite the delays, researchers such as Hamilton still seem enthusiastic about the building and the move. When he and other researchers and investigators move into the Basic Sciences and Biomedical Engineering Building, they will find their offices bathed in natural light coming through the building's many windows. The same will be true of many of the laboratories. Floors three though seven of the building are all identical; there are 20 offices, only three of which are inside offices, on every floor in the office wing. The inside offices and cubicles can receive natural light from clerestory windows above the doors of the outside offices.
Another feature in the new building is the prevalence of shared lab equipment and open labs. The building will also have the highest concentration of controlled-environment rooms on the East Bank campus, Hamilton said.
Shared lab equipment might not be a stretch from what researchers are accustomed to, particularly since the new building will house equipment such as electron microscopes and NMR magnets for researchers. But shared lab space might take some getting used to, Hamilton said. Unlike many of the buildings which currently house researchers, lab space and office space are not adjacent or connected in the new building, and there are no walls between collaborators' basic biological labs.
One example of a building at the University where researchers already work in open labs is the relatively new Ecology Building on the St. Paul campus. The Ecology Building and the Basic Sciences and Biomedical Engineering Building were presented to the Minnesota legislature as a package deal for funding, though the buildings were designed separately. Many researchers in the Ecology Building came from what had been the Zoology Building on the site of the current Basic Sciences and Biomedical Engineering Building. Because of the funding arrangement, the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior moved to the St. Paul campus near other similar departments, and the medical school was able to expand into its new building, the Basic Sciences and Biomedical Engineering Building.
Professor Patrice Morrow, head of the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, said of the open labs in the ecology building, "For us, at least, the open labs work pretty well."
Frank Barnwell, another professor in the ecology, evolution, and behavior department, said, "[The idea of open labs] foreshadows science today. It's getting away from the isolated empires of individual faculty members, and it opens the whole place up."
Barnwell expressed satisfaction with the open lab system and also noted of the open lab environment, "People have to be a little bit more compatible, but that's the way science is going-more reliance on team efforts."
Whereas the Ecology Building incorporated open labs upon the recommendation of a lab consulting firm, the Basic Science and Biomedical Engineering Building planning committee considered businesses and research institutions with open lab set-ups before deciding to include open labs. Choosing to include open labs is exciting to some faculty, including Professor Matt Tirrell, director of the Biomedical Engineering Institute. Tirrell, some of his colleagues, and the expanding institute comprise the biomedical engineering program in the new building, which will also house eight other research programs, all of which are through the medical school. Until now, most of the biomedical engineering researchers, as with researchers in other programs, were spread across the University. The new building will bring together many researchers with similar academic interests.
"My space is right in between the space of two other people with whom I've been collaborating very heavily, so it's very convenient," said Tirrell, who is on faculty in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.
The biomedical engineering program at the University consists largely of a graduate program, the two-year-old Biomedical Engineering Institute, and industrial interactions.
"The overall activity in biomedical engineering on campus isn't new, but the University has made a major new investment in supporting biomedical engineering," Tirrell said. The investment of which Tirrell speaks includes a $600,000 yearly budget, funded equally by IT and the medical school, a place in the new building and its name, a departmental structure in the form of the new Biomedical Engineering Institute, and help in campaigning for an endowment for biomedical engineering at the University.
Tirrell said that now the biomedical engineering program can offer more elective courses, but there are still no plans to add an undergraduate major program. While acknowledging that biomedical engineering is a popular undergraduate major at other universities, Tirrell still worries from an educator's perspective that it might not be wise for students to specialize so heavily in their undergraduate years.
"I don't think it's a good idea to learn all that you know about fluid mechanics strictly in the context of blood flow," said Tirrell, giving an example of his concern on overspecialization.
Besides bringing researchers together in labs, the new building also has electronically linked conference rooms, so that a distinguished speaker could give a talk in the main conference room and researchers could watch the presentation in conference rooms on the upper floors. Also designed to facilitate interaction among researchers are the numerous poster stands available so researchers can share their results in poster sessions.
In addition, the building will house state-of-the-art equipment to stimulate and facilitate research. An example of such equipment is the 800 MHz (18.8 Tesla) NMR magnet scheduled to be delivered to the Basic Sciences and Biomedical Engineering Building in August. Because of foresight on the part of Gerald Bratt, the NMR lab's designer, this breakthrough in technology that wasn't even available when the lab was planned will fit snugly in the building, said Professor Ian Armitage, director of the new NMR lab. Armitage said that, because of the immense size of 750 and greater MHz NMR magnets, these magnets often require a building of their own. Higher MHz magnets provide stronger magnetic fields, which "enable us to extend the size of the biological macromolecules that we can study, and that's important," Armitage said.
The 800 MHz magnet coming to the University is the first of its kind and is one of perhaps three or fewer 800 MHz magnets in North America, Armitage said. "It's actually referred to in conversation with manufacturers as 'the Minnesota Magnet,'" said Armitage, who will be one of several faculty to use the new magnet.
The facilities and architecture of the Basic Sciences and Biomedical Engineering Building attempt to best accommodate the researchers it will house. Still, some intellectual stimulation may come simply from having new equipment and a new office. "People's morale just absolutely soars when you get them into new facilities, so people are going to be very happy for a long time," said Morrow, who experienced the move from the former Zoology building to the new Ecology building.
Morale among future denizens of the Basic Sciences and Biomedical Engineering Building seems to be rising already. Said Tirrell, who is part of the expanding biomedical engineering program, "We are eager to get in there and begin to experience our new home."
