CASPER, Wyo. — The University of Wyoming said in a news release Thursday that a new ~$100 million Science Initiative Building is nearly complete and that a ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled for Thursday, March 24.
UW said that the new 153,000-square-foot, five-story building located in the northwest portion of its campus in Laramie will support undergraduate students as well as research in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. UW hopes that the facility will help the university become certified with a top-tier status as an American research institution with the Carnegie Classifications of Institutions of Higher Education.
“The Science Initiative Building is a new place where students can work directly in cutting-edge faculty laboratories and experience hands-on, active learning with hundreds of their peers,” UW President Ed Seidel said in UW’s announcement. “The facility also is the face of a new northwest corridor at UW that enables our students to experience hands-on learning in the introductory teaching laboratories of the Michael B. Enzi STEM Facility; the Engineering Education and Research Building for designing new tools for research; the Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center for work in core UW laboratories that measure genomes and the various molecules and their isotopes that cycle through our biosphere; and the Energy Innovation Center that is focused on finding solutions to the world’s energy challenges.”
While the building is complete, installation of equipment and furnishings will take place over the summer, with the building expected to be fully ready for use in fall 2022.
“The Science Initiative Building will be home to modern laboratory research space for faculty and students; a state-of-the-art greenhouse and plant growth areas; the Model Organism Research Facility; the Center for Advanced Scientific Instrumentation; and an active-learning classroom and collaborative spaces for undergraduate and graduate education and research,” UW said.
“The Science Initiative Building is a welcome and much-needed expansion of life-science research space on campus. The open-concept design of the labs will allow researchers like myself to realize new efficiencies and establish new collaborative relationships,” says Professor Jay Gatlin, head of UW’s Department of Molecular Biology. “I get particularly excited when I think about how my lab’s research will benefit from the Center for Advanced Scientific Instrumentation. This center will provide access to amazing cutting-edge instrumentation previously unavailable to researchers at UW and will likely have a profound impact on research across campus and throughout the state of Wyoming.”
UW said that funding for the facility was provided through state appropriations during Governor Matt Mead’s tenure and that ground-breaking occurred in November 2018.
UW’s full release shares further details regarding the new building.
