Legislators’ appropriations to IU will advance life sciences throughout the state of Indiana

The IUSM can now advance its plans for the following buildings:

• Medical Information Sciences (Indianapolis)—$15 million

• IUSM Research III (Indianapolis)—$33 million

• Fort Wayne Center for Medical Education—$14 million

The Medical Information Sciences building will house the Regenstrief Institute, the Bowen Center, the Department of Public Health, the Center for Bioethics, the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, biostatics and pediatric health services research. It will be built on land given to IU by the City of Indianapolis.

Research III will expand the school’s laboratory capacity for research in cancer, genomics and proteomics. The Fort Wayne Center for Medical Education will build a new facility to house research and its academic programs. In addition, a new medical education facility in Terre Haute will receive $65,000 annually for operations, beginning in fiscal year 2005.

IU will begin plans for the COAS Multidisciplinary Science Building (MSB) II in Bloomington with the General Assembly’s approval of bonding authority for $31.87 million. The design for MSB I, an 80,000-square-foot building, has been approved and construction is expected to begin early in 2004. No timetable for construction of MSB II has been established. Research in proteomics, genomics, materials science, biophysics and related disciplines will be housed in the two buildings.

In addition, the General Assembly provided bonding authority for the state to construct facilities for the Indiana State Police, which would include laboratories for the Indiana departments of Health and of Toxicology. This will benefit IUSM by opening up approximately 40,000 square feet of space in the VanNuys Medical Science Building currently used by the two state departments.

IU also will benefit from the legislature’s enactment of a bill that recognizes that research facilities are more costly to operate than education buildings and will fund operations of future buildings based on the new two-tiered rate.

“All of the projects will foster research programs that will allow faculty members to better compete for both public and private funding. In turn, this funding represents new revenues to the state and creates new jobs,” said Dr. Craig Brater, dean of IUSM.