Broad Institute celebrates opening of new building

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard today celebrates the opening of a 375,000-square-foot research building at 75 Ames Street in Cambridge's Kendall Square. Mayor of Cambridge David Maher, as well as city and state representatives, will attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony with Broad Institute officials and board members.

The new building, which seamlessly connects to the institute's 7 Cambridge Center location, consolidates the Broad's campus and reflects the Broad's core mission to bring together researchers from a variety of scientific disciplines to harness the power of genomics to transform the understanding and treatment of diseases. Research groups in the new building will be focused on many critical disease areas, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, metabolic diseases, autoimmune diseases, psychiatric diseases, and more. The building's location also reflects the institute's enduring commitment to Kendall Square and its partner institutions in the surrounding community.

"This building provides an extraordinary research community across Boston with a remarkable space for scientific collaboration and discovery," said Broad Institute Founding Director Eric Lander. "It also represents a deep commitment to Kendall Square and Cambridge, and the community that has nurtured us over the past decade."

Standing 292 feet and 15 stories tall, the building is home to 800 members of the Broad community who are pioneering new methods and technologies to revolutionize biomedicine. Designed expressly to facilitate the sharing of ideas, the new building's flexible floor plan integrates lab and office space on every floor, allowing large multidisciplinary research teams, administrative teams, and small academic groups to work side-by-side. The building accommodates the needs of Broad employees as well as faculty from throughout the Broad Institute's partner institutions — MIT, Harvard University, and the Harvard-affiliated hospitals.

Among the new building's occupants is the institute's Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, which seeks to uncover the biological basis of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, autism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Only a handful of researchers made up the Stanley Center at its inception in 2007. Today, it has more than 45 full-time employees and approximately 100 collaborators at the Broad's partner institutions.

"In the new building, we will have more space for multidisciplinary teams that include the world's leading experts in psychiatric disease research, who are crucial to our pursuit of new therapeutic targets for these diseases — targets that have eluded researchers for decades," said Steven Hyman, core member of the Broad Institute and director of the Stanley Center.

The U.S. Green Building Council awarded 75 Ames Street its LEED Gold certification, an award that ranks it among the world's greenest, most energy-efficient buildings. The building incorporates 20 percent recycled construction material, and 75 percent of construction waste was recycled. Its design includes features to reduce lab water usage and enhanced lighting controls to conserve electricity.

The opening of 75 Ames Street brings together Broad employees who previously worked in different parts of Kendall Square. A pedestrian bridge connecting several floors of 75 Ames Street to the institute's existing location at 7 Cambridge Center further enables collaboration among "Broadies," as the institute's employees call themselves. The institute's Genomics Platform will continue to occupy 320 Charles Street, the Broad Institute's nearby birthplace and original home.

"In order for innovation to thrive, we need cutting-edge companies, universities, institutions, and organizations across the cities of Boston, Cambridge, and elsewhere working together. The Broad Institute is a remarkable example of this kind of collaboration in action, having grown from a handful of visionary scientists to a large, thriving community of researchers," said Mayor of Cambridge David Maher. "This building reflects that remarkable growth — and the equally remarkable growth of a local biotech sector that's helped revitalize parts of my hometown."

About the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard was launched in 2004 to empower this generation of creative scientists to transform medicine. The Broad Institute seeks to describe all the molecular components of life and their connections; discover the molecular basis of major human diseases; develop effective new approaches to diagnostics and therapeutics; and disseminate discoveries, tools, methods, and data openly to the entire scientific community.

Founded by MIT, Harvard, and its affiliated hospitals, and the visionary Los Angeles philanthropists Eli and Edythe L. Broad, the Broad Institute includes faculty, professional staff, and students from throughout the MIT and Harvard biomedical research communities and beyond, with collaborations spanning over a hundred private and public institutions in more than 40 countries worldwide. For further information about the Broad Institute, go to http://www.broadinstitute.org.

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SOURCE Broad Institute