NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The University of Texas at Austin will expand its Biomedical Engineering department with a $55 million building that will house interdisciplinary research programs in bioinformatics, molecular imaging, genotyping research, pharmacological studies, and more, UT said Thursday.
The building, which includes a dozen wet labs, eight tissue-culture rooms, and four computational labs, was bankrolled by the state’s Permanent University Fund, by $3 million from the Whitaker Foundation, and $5 million from the Cockrell School.
The 141,000-square-foot, six-story building will include laboratory, classroom, and administrative spaces, and it will function as a “gateway” to the University’s planned northern campus life sciences expansion, which will include the James R. Moffett Molecular Biology Building, a neural and molecular science building, an experimental science building, and the College of Pharmacy buildings.
The Biomedical Engineering program is a joint venture between the University, the MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
Two floors of the building will be occupied by the College of Natural Sciences and by the College of Pharmacy.
"We will see breakthroughs by these researchers in medical imaging, nerve regeneration, cancer detection and treatment, drug synthesis and delivery, and countless other areas," said Cockrell School of Engineering Dean Ben Streetman.
Kenneth Diller, who is biomedical engineering chairman, said the research will include studies of diseases such as cancer, glaucoma, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and others.
The University did not specify when the new building will open.