Construction continues on IAST

A huge concrete structure now looms at 34th Street and Smith Walk, filling the massive hole that occupied the corner when students left campus last spring. After almost a year, construction on the Roy and Diana Vagelos Laboratories of the Institute for Advanced Science and Technology has reached a midway point, according to Vice President for Facilities Management Art Gravina. "It went up like an umbrella overnight," said University Board of Trustees Chairperson Roy Vagelos, who donated $10 million to the project. "It virtually exploded after the side walls of the hole and the slab for the basement roof were put in." The first phase of the project, expected to be completed by October 1997, will provide increased research opportunities for students in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the School of Arts and Sciences and the Medical School. "We are pushing for joint ventures as far as facilities," Gravina said. "Originally, each school at the University had its distinct location on campus. But as needs rose, they began to encroach on each others' districts. The IAST provides an answer to this problem." The building will house a center for chemistry, a center for chemical engineering and a center for medical research. Each floor will connect with the Chemistry Building at 34th and Spruce streets, where undergraduate classes will still be taught. In addition to Vagelos' donation, the IAST will be funded by foundations, corporations, the Medical School and the U.S. Air Force. However, none of the Institute's research will directly relate to the Department of Defense, Gravina said. "In 1989, the University Trustees submitted a grant [request] to the federal government and, when it was awarded, it was simply turned over to the Air Force to administer," he said. Vagelos said the IAST will be a centerpiece for one of the thrusts of the administration's Agenda for Excellence, a five-year strategic plan established last fall. "Throughout its history, the University has nourished and supported basic science research," the plan states, calling the IAST "the future home of world-changing basic research in chemistry, engineering and medicine." Vagelos said the building will enable the University to "be even more competitive in research and have even more capacity for teaching in some of the areas growing the fastest in science and the economy." Phase two of the IAST is scheduled to begin in January, according to Gravina. This portion of the project will establish centers for cognitive and computer science and a center for technology transfer, which will promote any discoveries made by scientists working in the institute. Also in the early stages of construction is the Biomedical Research Building Two, located immediately adjacent to the Clinical Research building and Medical Center parking garage. The $130 million project will provide space for an expansion of the research activities currently conducted by the Medical Center in the Stellar-Chance Laboratories, including basic medical investigations and the Institute for Human Gene Therapy. Construction on the building will take approximately two-and-a-half years, Gravina said.