Case Western Reserve University has opened the Roger E. Susi Interdisciplinary Research Building in Cleveland, a 189,000-square-foot, $300 million research hub that the university calls its largest single investment ever in research, according to the university’s newsroom.
The building, on the Case Quad along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, opened in October during the university’s bicentennial celebration. It brings together 65 faculty members, 300 researchers and dozens of students from the College of Arts and Sciences, the Case School of Engineering and the School of Medicine under one roof, in wet labs, dry labs and about 11,000 square feet of shared core facilities.
The design is built around collision as much as containment. Open lab configurations, a ground-floor cafe and meeting rooms throughout are meant to push researchers from seven interdisciplinary clusters — working on everything from new materials and battery chemistry to bio-inspired robots, drug delivery and restoring movement after paralysis — into each other’s paths.
The project carries the name of alumnus Roger E. Susi, whose $50 million gift with his wife, Kayoko, was announced at the opening. The building was funded by philanthropy matched with a century bond, a financing approach the university used to pair private donor gifts with long-dated borrowing to reach the $300 million total.
The opening also launched Breakthrough Point, a $2.5 billion philanthropic campaign the university describes as the most ambitious in its 200-year history. The campaign, chaired in part by former board chair Fred DiSanto, targets programs and new initiatives, research, capital projects, faculty support and scholarships, and it counts a combined $125 million Mandel foundations commitment among its early gifts.
University President Eric W. Kaler said the timing of the campaign is intentional, capitalizing on the school’s momentum as it begins its third century. For Cleveland, the hub deepens the University Circle research corridor the city shares with its major hospital systems, adding laboratory capacity and a talent pipeline for scientists and engineers in Northeast Ohio.
Researchers will now begin moving projects from buildings scattered across campus into the new facility, and the university says the building’s street-facing design along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is itself a statement — the first building on the boulevard, it says, to offer passersby a welcoming facade.
Photo: Rdikeman, CC BY-SA