When he came to campus five years ago, zoology and ecology graduate student Mario Vallejo-Marin remembers sharing his lab bench with nine other students.
As he sat looking out at two cranes building Duke’s newest research mega-complex Monday, Vallejo-Marin looks forward to late next year when his departments will move into the $115 million French Science Center.
Slated for completion in December 2006, the facility behind the Biological Sciences Building will provide much needed laboratory space and interdisciplinary collaboration opportunities for undergraduates, graduates and faculty in the sciences—especially biology and chemistry. When it is completed, the center will be the final piece, following the Levine Science and Research Center and the Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences, in the University’s threefold plan to improve science and engineering facilities.
“The introductory biology lab space and the intermediate level biology lab space is horrendous. It’s almost an embarrassment,” said Dean of Natural Sciences Stephen Nowicki. “When you have some of the best students in the world and some of the best professors in the world, you want them to be meeting in some of the best labs in the world.”
FSC is designed to be flexible, Nowicki said. Unlike the Gross Chemistry Building, the new facility will be able to adapt to the changing needs of the departments as advances occur. Any of the spaces can be modified to meet new research demands without major overhauls, guaranteeing the building’s use well into the future, Nowicki said.
The building will also promote cross-disciplinary exchanges between members of the sciences, Nowicki added, since laboratories from different departments will be located near one another.
In addition, students and faculty will be able to walk through the Biological Sciences Building into FSC. From FSC, people will be able to walk by LSRC and CIEMAS to the Medical Center.
“We wanted to have a lot more interaction built into the architecture. We also wanted people to hopefully bump into each other in the stairways and hallways,” said Philip Benfey, chair of the biology department.
Third-year biology graduate student Arielle Cooley looks forward to the interdisciplinary exchange the new science center promises.
“Hopefully overall there will be more communication. Right now, I don’t ever communicate with anyone in cell molecular unless I make a big effort to trek over,” Cooley said.
FSC will be 255,000 gross square feet, Benfey said, with 48,000 square feet each for biology and chemistry laboratories. Melinda French Gates, the building’s namesake, donated $30 million to the project.
Both Nowicki and Benfey are confident there will be more than enough room for research, but they are concerned there may be a lack of classroom space. In its initial blueprints, classrooms were placed in the basement of the FSC, but limited funds have prevented the realization of this space. Administrators are now considering converting sections of the Biological Sciences Building into classrooms.
Regardless, Nowicki believes the new science center will attract potential faculty and students.
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