Duke University

Over the past decade, Duke University has not only built or broken ground on more than a half-dozen major research facilities, but committed to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to launch sweeping initiatives and attract top faculty researchers.

Recent construction projects include the Snyderman Genome Sciences Research Building, completed in 2003, which partially houses Duke’s multidisciplinary Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy. The Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences, which opened in 2004, is a four-building complex dedicated to bioengineering, photonics, materials science and engineering, and remote sensing and instrumentation. The French Sciences Building, slated for completion in 2006, will provide cutting-edge research and teaching labs for genomics, biological chemistry, nanoscience, physical biology and bioinformatics.

More than bricks and mortar, these new buildings are tangible signs of Duke’s investment in research. That commitment was a central part of the university’s current five-year, $700-million strategic plan to set institutional priorities for campus-wide research initiatives in several additional areas, including computational biology, neural analysis and engineering, and environmental sciences and policy.