The construction of the building was made possible thanks to a huge donation of about 25 million dollars. The Technion will return to Israel Israeli researchers from the USA and staff the building with researchers from the fields of biology, computer science and biomedicine
By raising a huge donation of about 25 million dollars, last night the Technion inaugurated the Emerson building - a new building for life sciences, and opened an innovative field in it - nanomed (nanomedicine). The president of the Technion, Professor Peretz Lavi, thanked the Emerson family and the other donors for their generosity. "Thanks to you, the Technion can take advantage of its interdisciplinary strength, start innovative programs and bring brilliant Israeli researchers back to Israel," he said. "Two senior Israeli researchers will join the new center at the beginning of the next academic year."
The building has nine floors and will house researchers and staff members from the faculties of biology, computer science and biomedicine. With the addition of the new senior researchers, the innovative nanomed program will be opened on its top three floors, which will be shared by the Russell Berry Institute for Research in Nanotechnology and the Lori Lockey Center for Life Sciences and Engineering.
"This is the first building at the Technion that was built as a multi-departmental building," emphasized the head of the Lockey Center, Professor Yuval Shoham. "It will have two floors of infrastructural equipment, six floors for the research laboratories and a support systems floor. The infrastructural equipment center will serve the entire research community and will have a proteomics center (proteins) and bioinformatics, microscopy, analysis and flow cell sorting and genomics units. Millions of additional dollars were invested in advanced equipment for laboratories."
The building has ten thousand square meters and the area of each floor is about 900 square meters. This is a "green building", with an air conditioning system that stores water in ice tanks at night, when electricity consumption is low and cheap, and during the day is used for air conditioning.
