Head of Class: University of Florida Invests More Than $400 Million for Life Science Construction

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Reported by Annette Kreuger, Industrial Info Resources, Incorporated; Sugar Land, Texas. At the same time the University of Florida (UF) builds young minds, it is busy building a state-of-the art life science research infrastructure. According to a recent analysis of Industrial Info’s Pharmaceutical Tracker - Online Database, the school currently has six active capital projects and six recently completed representing a total investment value (TIV) of $378.7 million. Each of UF’s projects carries an average TIV of $31.5 million.

Click on the image at right to view a list of UF projects.

The largest of the recently completed projects is the $84.5 million Cancer and Genetics Research Complex. Designed by Hunton Brady Architects (Orlando, Florida), the 280,000 square foot building is the largest on campus and includes a five-story research wing and a six-story Genetics Institute wing. The Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research, which provides support services to scientists, and the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory, a premiere forensic anthropology laboratory are also located within the facility. Boston’s Ellenzweig Associates served as the project’s lab planners, which was built under a joint venture construction management contract between PPI (Gainesville, Florida) and Turner Construction (Maitland, Florida). Construction was completed in 2006.

The six-story, $94 million Biomedical Sciences Building is the largest active project currently under construction. Once again, UF tapped the design team of Ellenzweig and Hunton Brady for the 200,000 square foot facility. With Whiting-Turner (Towson, Maryland) serving as construction manager, the project got underway in 2006 and is expected to be complete in early 2009. The building’s 90,000 square feet of research space will house the Biomedical Engineering program, Animal Care Services and medical research programs including neuroscience, autoimmune diseases and stem cell biology.

Another eagerly anticipated project is the $35 million nanofabrication facility (NRF). Designed by M.W. Zander (Chicago, Illinois), the centralized, interdisciplinary building will feature Class 100-1000 cleanrooms for nanofabrication and bio/nano processing, with seven research bays, a tool move-in aisle, and a gowning area. The research bays include E-Beam Lithography, Bio/Nano Biological, Soft Lithography and Medical Research and Wet Processing. Simplified, a nano is one billionth of a meter, or a nanometer, which is on the scale of atomic diameters. For comparison, a human hair is about 100,000 times thicker than a nanometer. Practical applications and current fields of study include instruments that are able to "see" and "touch" at this scale, as well as nanoparticles, which consist of a variety of compounds including alumina, zinc oxide, magnesium, and titanium dioxide. Whiting Turner is expected to complete construction of the NRF during the first quarter 2008.

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