Construction of $50 Million USC Molecular & Computational Biology Building Heralds New Era for USC
State-of-the-Art Building Will Boost Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Research
By Eva Emerson
Bioinformatics. Genomics. Computational biology. In April, USC College celebrated both the research and the scientists that have propelled these scientific buzz words into common discourse. The occasion was a symposium and groundbreaking ceremony for the new USC Molecular & Computational Biology (MCB) Building.
The 100,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art life sciences research facility, which will be constructed on Parking Lot 6, near Vermont Avenue and 36th Place, will be dedicated to interdisciplinary research at the forefront of the biological sciences. With completion of the project expected in 2005, the MCB building will increase USC College research space by 23 percent.
“In the past half century, we have entered a truly extraordinary era of discovery in the life sciences,” says Joseph Aoun, dean of USC College and holder of the Anna H. Bing Dean’s Chair. “Just as the physical sciences drove many of the most far-reaching advances of the last century, the life sciences—bolstered by interactions with mathematics, computer science and statistics—are fueling today’s most resounding breakthroughs.
“The construction of the USC Molecular & Computational Biology Building heralds a new era for life sciences research at USC College,” adds Aoun, who aims to expand and improve life sciences research and teaching in the coming decade. That will include hiring more senior faculty, attracting highly qualified graduate students and increasing research space.
The new building also realizes an idea long nurtured by mathematician-turned-computational biologist Michael Waterman and his colleagues. When Waterman, the USC Associates Endowed Professor of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, first joined the USC College faculty in 1982, he began developing a cross-disciplinary research and education program built on genetics, math, computer science and informatics. The program first envisioned by Waterman, now an esteemed University Professor, has grown into one of the nation’s leading research groups in computational biology, a field that has become increasingly important in the era of genome sequencing and the attendant exponential growth in biological data.
This cutting-edge research group forms the core of the USC Center for Computational & Experimental Genomics, which will gain its first physical center in the new building. It includes Waterman, considered the founding father of computational biology; fellow computational biology pioneer Simon Tavaré geneticist Norman Arnheim, a professor of biological sciences, biochemistry and molecular biology; DNA researcher Myron Goodman; and computer scientist Leonard Adleman, creator of DNA computing.
“For two decades, college scientists have collaborated extensively, and very successfully, because of their passionate shared interest in learning more about the fundamentals of life,” Aoun says. The group’s success spurred USC to build the new facility, which will add much-needed modernized lab and core facilities. Future plans for an additional wing dedicated to molecular biology are also being considered.
The new facility is essential for ongoing recruitment efforts of topnotch life scientists, says Arnheim, USC Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences and holder of the Ester Dornsife Chair in Biological Sciences. “Put it this way: We probably wouldn’t be talking to current job candidates if we couldn’t point to the new building,” he says. “The new building is everything in terms of attracting the people we want.”
For scientists already here, the building gives shape to a long-awaited prospect—proximity to the people they work with most closely. After years of collaborating with colleagues dispersed across campus and in relatively isolated labs, faculty and their students will be close enough to create a working community of life scientists and the backdrop for the kinds of interaction that lead to scientific discovery.
“When you are always around each other, there are just more opportunities for interactions, which are key for the kind of research we are doing and especially for training graduate students in an interdisciplinary field,” says Tavaré, professor of mathematics, biology and preventive medicine, and holder of the George and Louise Kawamoto Chair in Biological Sciences. “We see the building becoming the center for activities in computational biology and bioinformatics at USC, across all campuses.”
The MCB building, designed with offices, common spaces, open areas, shared equipment rooms, meeting rooms and a seminar room, will allow researchers to host formal research presentations, scientific talks and informal get-togethers.
Molecular biology “wet” labs on the first two floors will complement a different kind of lab on the third floor, designed for a new breed of biologist fluent in both experimental biology and the analytical techniques of computational biology. The top floor will include computational biology labs characterized by banks of computers loaded with number-crunching software that speeds the analysis of data produced by the crew downstairs.
“The design of the new life sciences building was created with the intention of fostering interdisciplinary research, as well as casual contact between the building’s occupant,” says Jim McElwain, the USC College project representative who worked with the architectural firm Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership on the design of the MCB building.
The new facility also will have emotional impact on the College’s life sciences community. “The building will raise faculty and student esprit de corps tremendously,” comments Goodman, professor of biology and head of the molecular and computational biology division.
At A Glance: USC Molecular & Computational Biology Building
- Cost: $50 million for building construction
- Square footage: More than 100,000 square feet of modern lab, office, meeting and research support space
- Occupants: Up to 28 faculty research groups
- Eight new computational biology lab suites
- Eight new molecular biology lab suites
- Four “hybrid” labs, featuring both “wet” lab and computing areas
- Extensive space for shared research equipment and facilities, including massive computers and sophisticated gene-sequencing tools
- Division offices for molecular and computational biology program
- USC Center for Computational & Experimental Genomics administrative offices
- New site of USC Bioinformatics Core
- Project groundbreaking: April 24, 2003
- Estimated project completion: 2005
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