Designed by researchers for researchers, the 42,000-square-foot facility is a four-story building, with each floor home to what is essentially a giant laboratory without walls.
The intent of the unique layout is to foster collaborations between scientists from different fields of expertise, to spark spontaneous discussions, prompt multidiscipline problem solving and generate a whole new era of cutting-edge science for faculty and students at the Missoula campus, said David Forbes, dean of the College of Health Professions and Biomedical Sciences.
$100 million capital campaign, Forbes said.
Unlike “old school” laboratories, which are contained in isolated rooms of specialized research, the “new school” laboratories of the Skaggs Building look like a giant “great room” with interconnected work spaces that are designed for scientists from various disciplines to work on related research problems and share much of the big-ticket technology and critical research instruments.
“This is a major paradigm shift - not only on the university level, but at the state level,” said Rich Bridges, director of UM's Center for Structural and Functional Neuroscience. “The design of this is closer to a private research facility than what is found at academic institutions.”
Bridges said McLaughlin Research Institute, a nonprofit biomedical research organization in Great Falls, is perhaps the only facility in the state that has a setup similar to the new laboratories at UM.
UM dedicated the new facility last week and by the end of May researchers in the Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences - which includes the Center for Environmental Health Sciences and the Center for Structural and Functional Neuroscience - will begin moving their equipment in and setting up shop.
Bridges' center will move into most of the new laboratories and continue its efforts to unlock the mysteries of human conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, mental illness, stroke and addiction.
UM researchers already have claimed about 80 percent of the new facility, and the building will likely be at full capacity in the not-so-distant future, Bridges said.
“We don't know what's going to happen because of the new interaction between researchers, faculty and students,” he said. “We expect more ideas will come from it - more projects and more office space.”
Among the building's highlights is a 135-seat auditorium, spacious conference rooms, student work spaces and a science “discovery area” for showing K-12 students the wonders of science and thrill of research.
“I never would have dreamt that we would be here today,” said Bridges, who came to UM in 1993. “We've become a major player in education here.”
“Our pharmacy school is presently ranked No. 7 among U.S. pharmacy programs in total research dollars awarded by the National Institutes of Health and No. 5 in terms of NIH research dollars per faculty member,” Forbes said. “This addition will help maintain the standard of excellence we have established here in Montana.”
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