Learners and faculty collaborate in pursuit of next-generation solutions at new Pelotonia Research Center
The Ohio State University’s Pelotonia Research Center opened in May, providing new opportunities for learners and faculty to collaborate with researchers across multiple colleges and disciplines to discover solutions to the most challenging life sciences questions facing our generation. The center will feature “laboratory neighborhoods” focused on finding solutions to the most challenging life sciences questions facing our generation.
This five-story, 305,000-square-foot facility features more than 100 labs and will ultimately be home to up to 1,000 researchers and staff from several colleges. The College of Medicine will occupy 75-85% of these laboratory neighborhoods.
These researchers are joining forces to develop next-generation techniques and therapies for addressing cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases, behavioral health, food insecurity, gene and cell therapy, microbiome science and more.
“Having varied researchers in the same facility enhances creativity by exposing faculty and learners to ideas different from their own,” says Dana McTigue, PhD, associate dean for Foundational Research at the Ohio State College of Medicine. “Faculty and trainees can take their work in directions they otherwise would have never dreamed. This is the way transformative scientific advances are produced.”
“The center demonstrates Ohio State’s commitment to its mission as a land-grant university, a dedication to creating and providing research-based programs and knowledge to improve the well-being of the state and beyond,” says Peter Mohler, PhD, executive vice president for Research, Innovation and Knowledge at Ohio State and chief scientific officer at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine.
“Ohio State continues to support our world-class faculty, foster innovative learning and provide opportunities for scientists to blaze the trail for tomorrow’s breakthroughs,” Dr. Mohler says. “The Pelotonia Research Center furthers these efforts by bringing together researchers from multiple disciplines in one of the most technologically advanced new research buildings in the country.”
“The center is a place where the ‘old school’ type of science is a thing of the past, supplanted by large groups of experts from different fields bringing their collective expertise to an array of scientific questions,” Dr. McTigue adds.
“Students learning in the Pelotonia Research Center will gain the skills, knowledge and connections they’ll need to become the next generation of scientific leaders,” she says. “They will benefit from being present in the time and place where science took off from its current inflection point to reach unthinkable new levels and witness groundbreaking new advances.
“The center is intentionally designed to foster interactions that allow scientists to interpret and leverage comprehensive, complex data in an age when the capabilities of scientific techniques are advancing rapidly.”
“As a result, trainees flourish as well. They’re immersed in a setting that facilitates interactions and engagement with faculty and other students, and together, they’re part of a scientific collective for which the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts.”
The facility in Carmenton, Ohio State’s innovation district, is named in recognition of the partnership with Pelotonia, an annual bike ride that has raised more than $274 million for cancer research at Ohio State since 2008.
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