The second of IBO’s biannual new laboratory roundup focuses on new academic, pharmaceutical, and oil and gas labs. In addition, the table on page 3 highlights plans for new labs for the automotive and food industries, as well as for cancer research.

Seven life science teaching labs have recently been announced. Johns Hopkins’ Undergraduate Teaching Labs in Baltimore, Maryland, opened this month. The 20 chemistry, biology, biophysics, and psychological and brain sciences labs are located on the bottom three of the 105,000-square-foot building’s four stories. A biology research lab is housed on the top story. The building also features a computer lab, a lab with NMR instruments, and tissue culture and cold rooms. Students will use the labs to conduct research such as enzyme analysis and cell culture research. The new Life Sciences Building at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, will be completed by the end of 2014. The 265,000-square-foot Building will consist of 16 teaching labs and 70 offices for the College of Life Sciences. In May, construction began on the $110 million, 103,500-square-foot Life Sciences Building at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. The Building will feature 16,000 square feet of lab and research space, including 34 teaching labs, for the Seaver College of Science and Engineering’s biology, chemistry and natural science departments. It will also include classrooms and 50 offices. The three-story Building is slated to be completed in 2015. In June, Shenandoah University began construction on the $25 million, 71,000-square-foot Health and Life Sciences Building. It will house the biology, chemistry and pre-health departments. In addition to teaching labs, the Building will include classrooms and offices. The project is expected to be completed by August 2014. The proposed Bioengineering and Sciences Building at the University of Texas, Dallas, was recently given the green light. The $108 million, 220,000-square-foot Building will house biology, physics, chemistry, and electrical and mechanical engineering teaching and research labs. Construction will begin in November and is slated to be completed in the fall of 2015.

Outside the US, in the UK, construction of the University of Bristol’s £54 million ($83.1 million = £0.62 = $1), 13,580-square-meter (146,174-square-foot) research and teaching Life Sciences Building will be completed by January 2014. The Building will be comprised of three zones, including a five-story laboratory wing with acoustic chambers, spectroscopy and microscopy rooms, greenhouses and clean rooms. The project is the largest in the university’s history. A $33 million science lab will be constructed at Australia’s University of Wollongong as part of a $220 million capital expenditure project. The 6,000-square-meter (64,583-square-foot) building will include chemistry, biological science, and earth and environmental teaching laboratories, as well as new research labs. Officials recently announced that the university’s top priority is to increase the quality of its science labs, many of which are at least two decades old. Construction on the building began this month and is expected to be completed by December 2014.

Plans for biopharmaceutical labs have also been announced. In June, Alexion Pharmaceuticals broke ground on its new headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut, where it will relocate from its current Cheshire, Connecticut, location. More than 400 employees will move to the new site. Alexion will be the primary tenant of the $100 million, 11-story building, occupying nine stories. The building will open in 2015. Also in the Northeastern US, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals announced an expansion of the company’s headquarters and labs in Westchester County, New York. The expansion consists of two new buildings and 300,000 square feet of lab and office space. Construction will begin later this year and is expected to be completed in late 2015.

In Europe, AstraZeneca will build a £330 million ($500 million) facility in Cambridge, UK, on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. AstraZeneca will occupy about 11 of the Campus’s 70 acres. The company will move its global corporate headquarters and R&D center to the site from its current London base. Researchers at the facility will focus on both small molecule and biologics R&D. The center will serve as the company’s largest for oncology research, as well as house researchers focusing on cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory, inflammation and autoimmune diseases. The facility will be operational by 2016 and is expected to employ 2,000 people. There is also biopharmaceutical activity happening in Asia. CRO BioDuro opened a lab in Shanghai in May to expand its offerings to local biopharmaceutical customers for all stages of drug development. The 72,000-square-foot lab provides customized drug discovery services, including integrated drug metabolism and pharmacokinetic, bioanalytical, chemistry, biology and oncology pharmacology services. In addition, the lab contains 20,000 square feet of office space.

Labs catering to customers in the oil and gas industry have also been announced. Saudi Arabian oil and natural gas firm Saudi Aramco, which produces about 3.3 billion barrels of oil each year, has announced that it will build three research centers in the US. The 62,000-square-foot Detroit Research Center in Novi, Michigan, will emphasize fuel efficiency research and engine development. The facility will employ 20–50 people. Saudi Aramco will also open the Houston Research Center in Houston, Texas, focused on R&D for upstream technologies to discover and extract oil and gas. The location is close to many energy companies, R&D labs, and chemical and oil manufacturers. The company’s new nanotechnology Cambridge Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will emphasize computational reservoir modeling and advanced gas membrane systems. All three facilities will open later this year.

Outside the US, in June, Swiss firm Clariant opened an R&D center for the chemical, and oil and gas industries at its largest Latin American manufacturing plant in Suzano, Brazil. The center focuses on developing adsorbents to purify natural gas. The lab also provides technical support to Clariant’s Latin American customers. Ecolab company Master Chemicals Nalco Champion has also opened a new R&D facility, along with a new regional headquarters, in Kazan, Russia, in September. The 21,500-square-foot facility includes 4,000 feet of lab space for oilfield chemical research. The facility develops technologies to increase the productivity of Russia’s oil and gas industry, including those related to chemical management, water treatment products and fluid quality. Master Chemicals Nalco Champion also hopes that the facility will allow it to evolve with the oil and gas industry as processing hydrocarbons becomes more difficult.