Established in 1824, RPI is the oldest science and technology institute in the United States. But despite its stature in engineering and architecture, it had not pursued the life sciences with any vigor until a long-range plan was established about five years ago.

“A modern technical university needs life sciences and biotechnology to maintain a world-class standing,” says Robert Palazzo, a professor of biology, acting provost at RPI, and director of the Center. “Life sciences are based on discovery. Once you achieve a certain understanding, the application of that knowledge is the biotech industry. The goal of the Center is to accelerate the process from discovery to innovation.”

Planning for the Center began in April 2001, with construction starting the following May. The four-story, 218,000-sf building was completed in November 2004 for $100 million. When it reaches capacity, the building will house about 460 researchers and staff.

Shifting Gears

The pursuit of life sciences demonstrates a significant philosophical transformation for research at RPI.

“The individual scientists in 1,000-sf labs all operating with redundant equipment is a thing of the past,” explains Palazzo. “We want to establish a platform for the collision of ideas, an inviting venue that would draw non-traditional scientists from physics, computation, and engineering into the life sciences.”

To that end, researchers in the building are intentionally assigned lab space not by traditional discipline but in “constellations,” or Centers of Excellence, some of which bring together as many as six disciplines.

The wet labs are designed to be open and flexible, with height-adjustable modular benches on wheels which can be moved easily around the floor. The ceiling is lined with drop-down carrier service to connect to gas, electric, and vacuum, giving almost limitless variation to the arrangement of space. It also allows them to reconfigure the lab space quickly and seamlessly, which is critical in a scientific atmosphere that is constantly evolving.

“We had a very strong chair accept a position who needed more lab space than some junior faculty,” says Palazzo. “We had to quickly re-maneuver to create space for that individual. Two graduate students simply had to unhook their bench and wheel it through the corridor to another site. They did it easily without moving a bottle, and in less than a half an hour, that bench was operating.”

The open design took some getting used to on the part of researchers who were used to being proprietary about their space, but they have come to embrace the new model after working there for about a month, says Palazzo.

“The graduate students and the post-docs in particular love it because they can run back and cop reagents from each other,” he says. “They can look at each other’s data. If someone wants an opinion from someone else, it is very fast in this room.”

The first floor of the L-shaped Center contains 27,350 sf of core facilities—an 800 MHz NMR, proteomics, nanobiotechnology, imaging from the molecular to the organismal scale, and electron microscopy—most of which was purchased with a $22.5-million state grant intended to spur public-private partnerships with surrounding biotech companies.

Space is also assigned for a vivarium that is now being outfitted.

In an effort to steer away from the one-scientist-one-lab model, the building is designed with the 147 offices physically separated from the labs, but visually connected. The top three floors have offices lining the outside of the long south wing and the shorter east wing, connecting to the rest of the building through a four-story atrium.

“We wanted to optimize the opportunity for people from quite different backgrounds to come into contact,” explains Palazzo. “Visual contact could lead to an immediate discussion and then truly stimulate the interdisciplinary activity. We wanted investigators from different fields to recognize each other, see each other, and develop a new kind of a culture and community.”

On the other side of the atrium are 13,009 sf of support labs modules, containing general equipment such as ultra-cold freezers, microscopy, and centrifuges. Across a corridor, along the far wall are the BSL-2 wet labs, which are one continuous open space running the full length of the building on the three top floors, totaling 31,240 sf.

The second floor contains biochemistry, biophysics, chemical engineering, and cellular and molecular biology; the third floor houses tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, bio-computation, and bio-informatics; and the fourth contains biocatalysis, metabolic engineering, and systems biology.

“What we have done here is to take researchers from the rest of the campus who are interested in the life sciences and draw them into this platform,” says Palazzo.

For example, two chemical engineers, a mathematician, a physicist, and seven biologists, work together on one floor. As researchers develop collaborations, they reconfigure their position within the building, something that would not be possible with a less flexible lab design.

Pulling these scientists out of their departments, however, has had mixed results. About half of the biology department and a number of engineers are in the new facility. In biology, it has caused a split between the more junior faculty who are on the cutting edge of their research and therefore more likely to work in the new facility, and the very senior faculty, who have taken on the role of teaching. The engineers split along disciplinary lines, with the more traditional engineering faculty staying behind, and the bioengineers now housed at the Center.

Space in the building has become a coveted commodity, explains Palazzo. There are no classrooms or undergraduate labs; the building is intended for active, high-performing researchers. First and foremost, a researcher must fit the mission of the new Center.

“Someone working in ecology or environment science, which certainly are life sciences, would not fit the mission because they are not looking at the molecular mechanisms of living organisms,” he says.

Second, researchers must be productive in terms of how many graduate students they’ve trained, the impact their work has made, and their relative status in their field. The third underlining consideration is whether they will attract sufficient funding to sustain the facility.

The criteria favors senior faculty who are well-regarded in their field, and junior faculty who show great promise for a long, productive career.

The lab design and interdisciplinary building philosophy also helps to attract and fund new recruits.

The start-up costs to outfit new recruits can be as much as $300/sf explains Palazzo. The open lab almost eliminates that cost by obviating the need to renovate.

Recruits traditionally negotiate start-up funding for the first few years of their employment, which, in the past, has gone toward buying equipment. The labs’ shared equipment reduces that need, as well, so junior faculty spend the money on hiring staff, which in turn makes them more competitive in obtaining grants. The new Center now sustains $24 million in total federal grants, largely from the NIH.

“What they are doing is converting what they might have invested in redundant equipment in the past, and are driving personnel recruitment and graduate student recruitment,” says Palazzo. “This is a much more vibrant intellectual atmosphere as a result.”

Collaboration on Campus and Beyond

RPI has a long history of collaboration with private enterprise. In the 1980s, it was one of the first universities to establish a business incubator system, which feeds into a technology park owned by RPI. The park, which contains 35 to 40 businesses, is located on 1,200 acres three miles from campus. A significant amount of space remains to be developed, says Palazzo.

The collaborative philosophy pervades the Center itself in its shared spaces. Lounges for undergraduates and graduate students, and conference spaces of all sizes encourage impromptu gatherings and larger events, many of which are accessible to the greater community.

One thing the Center regrettably lacks, Palazzo concedes, is a dining facility.

“People sit down and have a coffee, have a sandwich, have a little place to dine and stop in,” Palazzo says of other interdisciplinary centers he’s visited. “When they are working, they need a place to sit and relax and have a little something to eat. That is where many, many interactions will take place.”

Researchers at the Center use the dining facilities in nearby buildings, which accommodates their needs, says Palazzo.

The Center has hosted 140 events in its first12 months, including scientific policy meetings, community events, and a K-12 kids’ science symposium.

“The building is engaging and brings the public into science, which is really important for us,” says Palazzo. “The public literacy issue about science and the fear of science in this country is major. It is not trivial.”

The atrium can hold as many as 1,200 people with little or no interference to the scientific work going on in the rest of the building, and has become a popular meeting space for members of the entire campus and the city of Troy.

A 180-seat auditorium, a very heavily sought-after space, is equipped with a small stage which has allowed the production of several well-attended plays, in addition to the scientific meetings and symposia. An exterior forum over the auditorium also is accessible to the community.

The building is intended to serve as an engine not only to drive life sciences research at RPI, but to also to drive biotechnology development in the region.

“General Electric, which is 20 minutes away in Schenectady, is knocking at our door to access our NMRs,” says Palazzo.

The Center also has “hotel space,” which is two suites of offices that industrial groups and people on sabbatical are invited to use to develop collaboration over the course of months or several years.

“We think this is going to result in the training of a new kind of scientist, a new kind of engineer, a new language in science,” says Palazzo. “The ability to rapidly communicate through many circles and possibly create many more as a result of this environment is going to be greatly accelerated.”

By Lisa Wesel