Sessions

Research programs evolve faster than buildings — and facilities that cannot adapt create both operational and recruitment problems for the institutions they serve. Session leaders present the latest innovative designs for holding rooms, procedure spaces, and behavioral study areas that allow rapid reconfiguration in response to shifting scientific demands. They illustrate solutions for integrating natural light and exterior views into staff circulation zones while preserving rigorous light control in sensitive animal areas, demonstrating how thoughtful facility expansion can simultaneously increase programmatic capacity, strengthen regulatory compliance, and meaningfully improve the daily working environment for animal care staff.

Labor costs and staff retention pressures are forcing vivarium leadership to take a harder look at cage processing—one of the most physically demanding and resource-intensive functions in animal facility operations. Coryne Casey of ZGF Architects presents a comparative analysis of cage wash automation options across the full spectrum, from manual and semi-automated equipment to fully integrated robotics, examining how facility scale determines which tier delivers the best return. She quantifies how each level of automation affects full-time equivalent staffing requirements, ergonomic burden and staff wellness outcomes, and total lifecycle cost—equipping facilities planners and institutional decision-makers with the economic and operational framework to make automation investments that pay off in both the budget and the workforce.

Modern animal research facilities face mounting operational pressures that rarely arrive in isolation: chronic staffing shortages demanding labor-efficient systems, constrained footprints requiring higher caging density, ambitious sustainability mandates targeting measurable energy reduction, and persistent occupational allergen risks affecting staff health. This session presents a real-world equipment integration case study demonstrating how a unified platform simultaneously addresses all four challenges. Through documented outcomes in density optimization, labor efficiency, energy consumption reduction, and allergen mitigation, presenters set out a replicable decision framework for evaluating integrated equipment investments that advance operational resilience, environmental stewardship, and occupational health in a single coordinated approach.

Siloed vivarium layouts do more than limit communication—they create inefficiency, mpede safety, slow decision-making, and undermine the workforce cohesion that sustains a high-performing animal care program. Robin Kastenmayer presents the design philosophy behind AstraZeneca's new Kendall Square vivarium, where a centralized operations hub surrounded by specialized procedure rooms replaced the fragmented room-by-room model of the prior facility. She details how integrated digital displays, shared KPI visibility, protocol alerts, and structured cross-functional gatherings translate space design into measurable improvements in coordination, compliance communication, staff recognition, and the scientific outcomes that depend on a connected, informed team.

Cage wash infrastructure represents one of the largest resource commitments in vivarium design—consuming water, steam, energy, and square footage that single-use alternatives can substantially reduce or eliminate. Jeremy Jenson examines what a broad industry transition to wash-free individually ventilated caging would mean in practice: quantifying the potential carbon footprint reduction, modeling the impact on U.S. research capacity and facility programming, and analyzing changes in utility demand across water, steam, and HVAC systems. For architects, planners, and facility leaders evaluating next-generation vivarium design, he provides a data-grounded framework for weighing the operational and sustainability implications of a wash-free model.

Vivarium automation is not a single technology — it is a connected ecosystem of physical and digital systems that reshapes how facilities operate, how data flows, and how research gets done. Brian Bilecki maps the full scope of automation across animal rooms, support spaces, and facility workflows, from cage-level environmental monitoring and automated census tracking to cage wash robotics and unified control infrastructure. He advises on where to start, how to sequence investments, and how facility design — organized around functional cores like biocontainment, breeding, and behavioral research — enables automation to deliver durable operational and scientific returns.

Vivarium owners are asking for more — better space efficiency, smarter workflows, lower long-term costs — and integrated project delivery is proving to be one of the most powerful tools for getting there. Using Brown University's 16,000-cage Danoff vivarium as a case study, session leaders share how bringing owner stakeholders, architect, and contractor together from day one generated innovative solutions in equipment selection, space planning, and construction sequencing that a traditional siloed process simply would not have surfaced. The result is a facility that outperforms conventional benchmarks on efficiency and long-term operability — and a replicable model for institutions ready to demand more from their project teams.

With the FDA and NIH accelerating their push toward New Approach Methodologies — and federal funding cuts already increasing pressure on animal research programs — the question isn't whether animal research facilities need to accommodate non-animal models. It's how to build that flexibility in from the start. Michele Cunneen presents a design framework for facilities that can pivot between live animal work and in vitro systems without major renovations. She explores modular mechanical strategies, utility planning, and barrier adjacencies that preserve optionality. She also explains why full animal model replacement within five years remains an unrealistic planning assumption despite current policy momentum.

The LAS sector faces converging pressures—reproducibility demands, workforce volatility, sustainability mandates, and public scrutiny — that manual, labor-intensive vivarium models were not built to absorb. Presenters introduce the “Automation Loop,” a systems-level approach that connects cage wash operations, autonomous guided vehicles, and intelligent cage-level monitoring into a continuous, data-driven workflow. They examine how this integration reduces repetitive manual tasks, improves environmental consistency, generates actionable research data, and measurably reduces water, energy, and resource consumption — positioning the automated vivarium not as a technology aspiration but as an operational and institutional sustainability strategy.

Wall and door protection in vivarium facilities is most effective — and most cost-efficient — when it is designed in from the start, not specified as an afterthought once the damage patterns become obvious. Session leaders present the collaborative protection strategy developed for Brown University's Danoff Laboratories vivarium, where architects, vendors, and contractors engaged early to develop a unified system of walls, doors, and hardware tailored to actual traffic patterns, equipment movement, and operational conditions. The session traces how that early coordination produced protection details that standard specifications alone would not have captured — and how the resulting system reduces long-term maintenance burden, contamination risk, and costly remediation

Renovating an occupied biomedical research facility while animal studies remain active is among the highest-stakes operational challenges a research institution can face—and informal coordination is rarely sufficient. Phil LaTourette and Dawn Hidenfelter detail the integrated monitoring and communication strategy deployed during a multi-million-dollar renovation of a mid-century urban research building. They lay out an approach combining pre-construction baseline assessment, targeted sensor deployment in critical vivarium zones, automated real-time data integration, and a structured stakeholder communication framework spanning IACUC engagement, faculty updates, and daily construction coordination. They provide lessons learned, and document the results achieved in animal welfare and research continuity.

Replacing sterilization equipment in a live cage wash operation requires as much operational planning as it does technical specification. Robert Davis and Tyler Caron examine a recent project at The Broad Institute in which two steam sterilizers were replaced with dry heat units in an active vivarium facility—with minimal disruption to daily workflows. They detail the project drivers, how the choice of dry heat technology reduced the complexity of the installation, what facility preparations proved essential, and how the project team managed throughput continuity and staff coordination throughout execution. They deliver a replicable model for institutions facing aging sterilization infrastructure without the option of a facility shutdown.

Constrained sites, prohibitive construction timelines, and urgent demands for operational research space are pushing institutions to rethink conventional delivery — and modular construction is proving to be a serious long-term infrastructure strategy, not a stopgap. United Therapeutics' experience scaling a pioneering research program through phased modular construction — from a startup vivarium unit to a permanent facility engineered for 30-year longevity — offers a replicable framework for institutions navigating similar pressures. Session leaders examine the real advantages in cost certainty, schedule compression, and sustainability performance, and address the permitting complexity and stakeholder misconceptions that remain the primary barriers to broader adoption.