This application seeks $2 million in matching funds towards the construction of 24,980 sq. ft. of wet bench laboratory space in a new laboratory building for the life sciences on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania (UP). The balance of the cost of this space, which will be assigned to the Department of Biology, will be paid by the UP. The University will also cover the cost of the remainder of the building, which totals 56,752 sq. ft. devoted to additional laboratory space for the University-wide Genomics Institute (GI) as well as supporting facilities housing laboratory animals and plants. The construction of the new laboratory space represents both quantitative and qualitative improvements of the research facilities available to researchers in the Department of Biology, who collectively hold peer-reviewed awards funding of approximately $8.5 million in annual direct costs. The present space occupied by many of these investigators is substandard and will be retired at the conclusion of this project. This building represents the first phase of a two-stage process that, when complete, will provide approximately 100,000 new sq. ft. of space devoted to research and training in the life sciences. When both phases are finished, the combined Life Sciences Building will house about half the faculty of the Department of Biology, and nearly the entire faculty of the Department of Psychology, as well as the GI and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCN), and will make possible new collaborative efforts in critically important fields.
