The Health Sciences Research Building (HSRB) opened its doors in April 2013. This state-of-the-art research space is located directly adjacent to the Emory-Children’s Center and connected via a two-story bridge. This four-story building includes 190,000 ft2, with over half the space (115,000 ft2) dedicated to research within the Emory Department of Pediatrics. An open lab concept features natural light in labs and corridors. The building features a 160-seat auditorium and a cafe dining area with an outdoor seating option. The building houses 500 people, including 74 faculty researchers and their teams of postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and staff.
The building includes biosafety level 2 and 3 labs. The BSL-3 Laboratory is located on the 4th floor. This specialized facility is a total of 425 ft2 of shared BSL3 laboratory space. The BSL3 laboratory consists of 6 separate rooms including a doffing and donning area with included shower and sink, PPE storage, common storage including a flammable cabinet and autoclave, and two designated work suits of 100 ft2 each (E-499-A/B) which house the needed equipment. The dedicated equipment for this space is two -80C freezers, centrifuges, water bath, scopes, a pass through autoclave, flammable cabinets, and a dedicated computer.
Research in HSRB is designed to facilitate multidisciplinary child health research collaborations with space dedicated to drug discovery, immunology and vaccines, neurosciences, cancer, gastroenterology, transplant immunology, nephrology, biomedical engineering, and human genetics. The two-story working bridge that connects HSRB to ECC houses researchers dedicated to informatics, outcomes research, public health research, and clinical research.
HSRB Animal Space
An IACUC-approved 13,944 ft2 animal vivarium is located in the basement of the HSRB Building. This animal facility is designed on a single corridor concept and contains rodents and fish with the intent to maintain rodents at a higher health standard than the convention for the campus (i.e. free of Murine Norovirus, Mouse Parvovirus, Helicobacter species, and fur mites enzootic to varying degrees in Emory mouse colonies). It includes microisolator ventilated cages for housing mice, surgical, and procedure rooms. This is Emory University’s first virus antibody free (VAF) animal facility. Under this new and elevated level of animal health maintenance there are special training, access, and traffic control measures. A gnotobiotic facility is being established in a portion of the HSRB vivarium and currently houses 6 isolator units.
Veterinarians and care staff are available for consultation on routine and special procedures, and on call after work hours and on holidays. Investigators using rodents of a lesser health status use the ECC animal research facility immediately across the street and accessible by bridge.
HSRB II
HSRB II brings together 1,200 biomedical researchers from cardiology, vaccinology, neurology, oncology and pediatrics and places them in a 350,000-sq.-ft. building designed to spur collaboration and innovation.
The eight-story building includes laboratory and collaborative spaces for researchers. Open labs and workspaces with soft barriers facilitate rapid discovery. Research conducted here will focus on imaging sciences, biomedical engineering, cardiovascular medicine, child health including cancer, adult cancer, inflammation, immunity and immunotherapeutics, emerging infections and other interdisciplinary programs. HOK is providing lab planning and programming services.
Core facilities include advanced imaging, flow cytometry, a biorepository, genomics, and other technologies. Spreading these core functions throughout the building fosters interaction among experimentalist, computationalist, and core technology platforms.
The building’s first floor is dedicated to an innovation zone that includes an accelerator space for startups and entrepreneurial research. This will help promote translation of scientific discoveries into clinical and health system technologies. Open views between floors visually connect scientists across disciplines. Shared community spaces foster serendipitous encounters and cross pollination. An innovation zone pairs research with industry, and a first-of-its kind digital platform links building occupants to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. SRB-II is a trailblazing space designed to incite better collaborations and bigger impacts in biomedical research. Multidisciplinary to its core, it brings together experimental researchers, compositionists, and core technologies to solve the biggest human health problems of our time.
Large digital experiential collaboration platforms will drive discussion of burning scientific questions, celebrate scientific discovery at Emory and connect diverse scientific groups.
The building is located on Haygood Drive on the Emory University campus.