Latest Reports

With academic research funding either flat or slumping, it’s time to rethink current laboratory design standards. Concurrent with the funding slide is a hike in both direct costs (salaries, for example) and indirect research costs like spending on facilities operation, equipment, and labor. At the same time, the demand for space continues to increase unabated.

The new College of Pharmacy building at the University of Rhode Island allows the College’s scattered facilities to be housed under one roof for the first time.

Washington State University’s three-story, 62,000-sf Paul G. Allen Center for Global Animal Health is the first of a two-phase project dedicated to infectious disease research and animal diagnostics. It houses the Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health, which provides innovative solutions to global infectious disease challenges through research, education, global outreach, and application of disease control at the human-animal interface. The second phase will be completion of the Washington Animal Disease and Diagnostic Laboratory.

Regents Hall Science Center, the first phase of Georgetown University’s Science Facilities Master Plan, integrates all physics, chemistry, and biology research labs on three connected floors. The new facility also houses the Institute for Soft Matter Synthesis and Metrology, funded in part through a $6.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Standards and Technology. The institute conducts research into materials that are neither liquids nor solids, such as liquid crystals, gels, colloids, polymers, and foams.

Lacking space for its health science programs but faced with a limited budget, the University of Georgia is repurposing a former Navy Supply Corps School as a new Health Sciences campus, salvaging a property slated for closure and creating a more modern, collaborative learning environment. Throughout the renovation process, the challenges have been managing end-user expectations, balancing practicality with functionality—including reusing some materials—and dealing with diverse properties in this compatible but not perfectly matched space.