NSU’s Center for Collaborative Research received its certificate of occupancy in March and will officially open sometime in 2016.
Gary Margules, vice president for the Office of Research and Technology Transfer, said that, although no date has been set, the current plan is to hold the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the center in September. The different institutes and organizations will start moving in as early as May 1.
The six-story, 215,000-square-foot center, located near the Health Professions Division Building, will house NSU’s Cell Therapy Institute, the Rumbaugh-Goodwin Institute for Cancer Research, NSU’s Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine, the NSU Technology Incubator, the Emil Buehler Research Center for Engineering, Science and Mathematics, and the United States Geological Survey. Several tech-based corporations are also interested in renting the available space on the second and third floors of the building.
“Each laboratory needs something special,” Margules said. “So this will not be an overnight process.”
Margules said that, by September, the center will be mostly occupied and that the plan to open the center in September is more about the availability of students to participate in the ceremony than the occupancy of the building. He said that there will be significant opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students to conduct research in the center, beginning in the fall.
Richard Jove, research professor and director of the Cell Therapy Institute, said that, while the certificate of occupancy means that the different organizations can legally occupy the space, the Cell Therapy Institute is waiting to acquire laboratory equipment and furniture before moving.
Jove said that students are critical to the center’s operations.
“This is an opportunity for students to get involved in world-class research that will make a difference in terms of Gulf War syndrome, cancer therapy, cardiovascular disease, among others,” he said. “Advanced students with an interest in getting exposure in a laboratory will be able to do that.”
According to Margules, the center will be transformational in terms of research capacity.
“Right now, NSU is bursting at the seams,” he said. “This new space, plus [NSU’s other new projects] and the core facilities that will be new to the university, opens up room for the existing people to blossom and for the new people to have a really nice place to work.”
For more information about the Center for Collaborative Research, visit nova.edu/ccr.
Caption: Jove (center) with researchers from the Swedish Karolinska Institute in one of the Center for Collaborative Research labs.
Photo Credit. L. Craddock
