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from the issue of October 5, 2006
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Construction begins on new virology center
BY KELLY BARTLING, UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
Construction of a new virology research building, the Ken Morrison Life Sciences Research Center, begins Oct. 5 with a special groundbreaking. Expected to be on hand for the 4 p.m. ceremony are Harvey Perlman, chancellor; Prem Paul, vice chancellor for research; Charles Wood, director of the Nebraska Center for Virology; and Morrison, the donor.
| | VIROLOGY CENTER - This artist's rendition shows the Ken Morrison Life Sciences Research Center. Courtesy image.
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The $18.6 million, 70,000-square-foot building will house laboratory and offices for the Nebraska Center for Virology. The building will provide a research facility designed to foster interaction and collaboration among researchers, visiting fellows, students and staff. It will include full laboratories for 12 scientists plus separate spaces for tissue culture work, a Polymerase Chain Reaction suite, cold and dark rooms, shared microscopy and cell-flow cytometry facilities and a Biological Safety Level-3 research laboratory suite. The building will provide virology center researchers much needed space to continue and expand on research under way at the UNL Beadle Center where the center is now headquartered.
Construction on the site on UNL's East Campus, east of the Vet Diagnostic Lab and northeast of McCollum Hall, begins this fall, with the building opening in December 2007.
The Nebraska Center for Virology was established in 2000 as a Center for Biomedical Research Excellence with a five-year, $10.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. In 2005 the center received a second $10.6 million grant to support the center over the next five years. The center links scientists at UNL, University of Nebraska Medical Center and Creighton University. Center researchers are working to understand the molecular mechanisms that diverse viruses employ to cause diseases. Charles Wood, a molecular virologist and Lehr/3M university professor at UNL, directs the center.
"This new building not only gives us space for us to expand and do things we cannot do here at the Beadle Center, but it will be providing newer technologies, newer space and a biocontainment facility," Wood said. "It also enables people to collaborate, interact and get better ideas and do better work, all under one roof."
Wood said the center for virology has worked on the interactions and relationships among viruses and virus transmission with the goal to discover how immune responses occur, leading to greater abilities to create vaccines or medicines to boost immunity to viruses causing diseases like AIDS or cancer.
"We need a state-of-the-art facility for what we're doing, and this building does that," Wood said.
Morrison, the benefactor providing the lead gift for the building, will attend the event. The Hastings native and longtime university advocate and University of Nebraska Foundation trustee, has provided the lead gift for the planned center, which will house the Nebraska Center for Virology. This is the latest of Morrison's numerous contributions to the university, which have included establishing the Morrison Biotechnology Fund, supporting UNL's microscopy research facility at the George W. Beadle Center for Genetics and Research, and funding the Kenneth Morrison Professorship in Food Engineering.
Morrison is a general partner and business manager of Morrison Enterprises, a Nebraska-based agricultural company engaged in alfalfa production and marketing, grain storage, livestock production, farmland development and management, aquaculture and cotton and feed grain production.
GO TO: ISSUE OF OCTOBER 5
NEWS HEADLINES FOR OCTOBER 5
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Verbatem
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