Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland opened its new Roger E. Susi Interdisciplinary Research Building on October 22, 2026, an opening the university tied to the launch of a $2.5 billion comprehensive campaign, according to the university’s official news coverage of the building.
The research building is organized around open laboratory configurations designed to bring researchers together across seven distinct interdisciplinary research clusters, according to reporting on the opening. The structure is intended to facilitate collaboration among teams that would traditionally work in separate departments and buildings in University Circle.
The project was financed through a strategy that paired private donor gifts with century bond proceeds. The Mandel foundations provided $125 million in funding to support the university development, and Roger and Kayoko Susi committed an initial $25 million to the project in 2023, according to the published accounts of the building’s funding.
The total project cost was reported at $300 million, supporting a research team of about 365 people. University leaders presented the financing approach as a way to expand research capacity while matching long-dated philanthropic commitments to a building designed to serve multiple generations of researchers.
The Susi building’s opening was the headline event in a nine-part university series introducing the research, the people and the building that Case Western Reserve says will define its next chapter of discovery, including work on how a changing planet transforms life, robotics drawn from evolution, and restoring movement and sensation for people with neurological conditions.
For Cleveland, the opening adds another major research anchor in University Circle, the district that is home to the university, University Hospitals and the city’s major cultural institutions, and one of the state’s largest employment centers.
The university said the building and the campaign together mark the start of its next era, with the seven research clusters now moving into the new space in Cleveland.
The opening on October 22 was listed by the university among the latest milestones for the building, following a series of stories in October introducing each of the research clusters and the faculty teams moving into the new laboratories.