BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE

Several buildings, recently completed and under construction, expand the university’s research resources in several key areas of emerging research.

The 160,000-square-foot Neural and Molecular Science Building opened during the year, providing a home for the Center for Learning and Memory and researchers in the Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology. They are part of the College of Natural Sciences.

The building, which has 80,000 square feet of assignable space, has 42 laboratories and offices for faculty and students. It also provides space for faculty relocating from the Experimental Sciences Building.

The Blanton Museum of Art, scheduled to open in April 2006, will house one of the biggest university art collections.

The Blanton Museum of Art will open in April 2006. The 180,000-square-foot-museum will include a range of spaces for the display of its collection of more than 17,000 works of art, special exhibitions, research and educational opportunities and social interaction.

The two-building complex will include: The Mari and James A. Michener Gallery Building that will house the permanent collection and temporary exhibitions; the Education and Visitor Pavilion, featuring a café, museum shop, classrooms and auditorium, which will open in early 2007; and a public plaza and garden that will connect the buildings.

For more information visit the Blanton Museum of Art Web site.

The Center for Nano and Molecular Science (CNM) building also neared completion with an opening set for June 2006. It will bring together more than 100 faculty scattered across campus into one facility.

The construction for the new $40 million building broke ground in March 2005. More than 100 CNM faculty fellows and 250 CNM facility users await the completion.

The five-story, 64,912-square-foot building will have 22,111 square feet of assignable space for office and laboratories including 2,500 square feet of clean room space. It also is designed to serve as a gathering place for the central Texas nanotechnology community with space for meetings, technology transfer activities and outreach activities on the first floor.

For more information visit the Center for Nano- and Molecular Science and Technology Web site.

Construction also has begun on a 94,000-square-foot building to house the growing Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and the Institute for Geophysics at the J.J. Pickle Research Campus.

The two research units, which already work closely together, anticipate stronger collaborations with each other and with the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG), which is next door to the new building, as they help the university compete for federal research and development funds.

TACC is one of the leading advanced computing centers in the United States, serving researchers in Texas and across the nation. As demand for supercomputing has increased, TACC has grown from a staff of 15 to more than 60 people in four years, and that number is expected to double to 120 over the next four years. The new building will offer room for further expansion.

The new building will have a 6,000-square-foot, raised-floor computer machine room that can be expanded to 12,000 square feet. It will accommodate all existing infrastructure with room to grow. A scientific visualization laboratory is a future expansion option.

In addition to gaining ready access to TACC’s computing systems, researchers at the Institute for Geophysics will be connected by covered walkways to the Bureau of Economic Geology.

The new building will mark the first time the entire staff of the institute will be on a University of Texas at Austin campus. It has been housed in rental space since moving to Austin from its dockside facilities at The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in 1982.

Researchers at the institute study processes shaping the earth’s structure and environment, including sea-level fluctuations, climate change and geologic hazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis. They also develop new mathematical techniques for data processing and imaging, research that relies on high-end computation.