The Opportunity
The new building will provide approximately 100,000 square feet for state-of-the-art undergraduate teaching laboratories, classrooms, teaching support, graduate research laboratories and offices. This building will serve as the solution that remedies serious problems on the two fundamental fronts:
Teaching
- Students will move from a model of cramped space and limited time to a model that provides them with laboratory skills worthy of their classroom knowledge.
- Improved training will enable students to surpass those of their peers and competitors around the world.
- New labs will allow each student the bench space to get hands-on experience with the latest equipment.
Research
- World-class science requires world-class lab space. This building will provide modern, modular laboratory space that can be reconfigured as needed for large, interdisciplinary collaborations that are increasingly the norm.
- Chemical biology — which uses chemistry to understand the environment, human health, and medicine — is one of the top research areas that can lead to enhanced 21st century health care, and includes new theories related to gene expression, signaling and drug synthesis.
- New labs will give UF the edge it needs to recruit the best scientists and allow them to compete successfully for external funding.
- Faculty and graduate students working in the areas of chemical biology and chemical synthesis need new facilities to understand how molecules found in nature, such as anti-cancer agent Taxol, can be used as alternative to traditional pharmaceutical treatments.
- Connective lab space and an open-design create a climate of cooperation between different labs. This will power interdisciplinary breakthroughs and help stimulate communication between different fields across the UF campus and around the world.
- New facilities create new opportunities for collaboration, sparking creativity and critical thinking. These are important aspects of our research in green chemistry which is vitally important to our future.
Why Now?
We have a unique opportunity to fund this new building. The Florida legislature has appropriated money for a new chemistry/chemical biology building in the upcoming budget year. We anticipate additional funding next year as well, provided the University of Florida matches the state money for that two-year period.
The challenge is turning this opportunity into reality. To do so, we aim to raise $30 million in private support. UF President Bernie Machen has indicated that this project is a university-level priority and has put the full weight of his office behind it. It is a monumental undertaking that, when successful, will alter the Department of Chemistry at UF forever. President Machen understands that the future of the University of Florida is dependent on a strong science-based core, the space to conduct groundbreaking research, and the very best people dedicated to discovery and learning. President Machen believes that it all begins with chemistry.
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