SYRACUSE — The State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University on Oct. 21 formally opened its more than 158,000-square-foot Neuroscience Research Building (NRB), an expansion of Upstate’s Institute for Human Performance (IHP). The one-block long, five-story addition, which is adjacent to the IHP, cost $72 million, Upstate Medical said in a news release. […]
SYRACUSE — The State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University on Oct. 21 formally opened its more than 158,000-square-foot Neuroscience Research Building (NRB), an expansion of Upstate’s Institute for Human Performance (IHP).
The one-block long, five-story addition, which is adjacent to the IHP, cost $72 million, Upstate Medical said in a news release.
The facility is located on a two-acre site bounded by Harrison and Madison streets, and Crouse and Irving avenues in Syracuse.
The expansion is designed to help bring the researchers at Upstate Medical University together to study the brain, said Rosemary Rochford, vice president for research at Upstate Medical, in speaking with reporters following a tour of the facility.
“We’re bringing all the scientists from different parts of the campus together. We’re bringing our clinical researchers and our basic science researchers to really begin to look at … basic functions of the brain and also how the brain doesn’t go so right sometimes in disease,” Rochford said.
The researchers at Upstate Medical, who are already focused on studying the brain, will move into the facility next April, Rochford said.
The expansion also seeks to speed the pace of scientific discovery and to strengthen Upstate’s research enterprise, projected this year to total $34 million, the medical school said.
“It is a vital part of our mission, that being research and new knowledge. It’s also vital for the region … and that, of course, is the new knowledge-based economy,” Dr. David Smith, president of Upstate Medical, said in his remarks during the ceremony.
The formal opening preceded a public lecture that featured three of the country’s leading names in brain-research science. They included Susan Hockfield, Nicholas Spitzer, and Dennis Choi, who discussed how present-day research is leading to new advances in the prevention, treatment, and cures for disorders of the brain.
Hockfield is president emerita and professor of neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Spitzer is director of the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind and professor of neurobiology at the University of California, San Diego. Choi serves as director of the Institute for Advanced Neurosciences and professor and chair of the department of neurology at Stony Brook University.
The building design
The Boston–based architecture firm Goody Clancy designed the expansion to achieve the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) silver designation from the U.S. Green Building Council, Upstate Medical said.
The building also features a parking garage for 51 vehicles, mechanical space, loading dock, and space for a future cyclotron (a type of particle accelerator). The structure also has a combination of 31 wet/dry, open/closed laboratories and laboratory support that includes microarray, microscopy, and phenotyping cores, offices, and administrative space.
It also includes a two-story atrium providing gathering space, conference rooms, a lounge, and a physical connection to the existing building, Upstate Medical University said.
About the research
Interdisciplinary research at the IHP is currently devoted primarily to human activity and rehabilitation.
The NRB will house investigators from various disciplines whose studies involve disorders of the nervous system, such as behavioral disorders like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), diseases of the eye, and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or what’s known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease), Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s, according to Upstate Medical.
The building is designed to allow scientists and researchers to easily move between different labs, and not confining them to a single “cubby hole,” Rochford said.
“So, that fosters interaction,” she said.
Upstate Medical is also using state funding to invest in “cutting edge” technology in the NRB, Rochford added.
“We’re going to get microscopy and this is a way to look inside the brain, so you get better visualization of what the brain is actually doing,” she said.
Upstate Medical is investing in next-generation sequencing technology as well, Rochford said, referencing the scientific mapping of the human genome and noting that Upstate researchers will use the technology in their study of the brain.
“Understanding people’s genetics and why they’re susceptible to different types of diseases, and in this case, neurological diseases,” Rochford explains.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com