Posted on Jan. 27: Opening doors to a bright future
[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/CLaD.jpg” caption=”CLaD”]It will be a building for students and new ideas.
Construction has begun on McMaster's Centre for Learning and Discovery, the University's 300,000 square-foot, five-storey expansion to the north side of the McMaster Health Sciences Centre. It will be completed in the summer of 2004.
The new facility will provide much needed space for teaching, learning and research and will address a number of critical needs for the University and its affiliates.
The first floor will include six classrooms and five lecture theatres for classes from across all faculties. One theatre, with 600 seats, will be the largest seating space on campus. Altogether, the first floor will seat more than 1,800 students and will help McMaster address the needs created by Ontario's “double cohort”.
The second floor will be connected to the McMaster University Medical Centre and used by Hamilton Health Sciences for patient care wards. Plans are still being finalized, but the hospital may use the space for intensive care facilities.
The third floor has been dedicated to the needs of the Faculty of Health Sciences for classrooms, tutorial rooms, postgraduate offices and laboratories. A rounds room will have state-of-the-art teleconferencing facilities, allowing students at hospitals across the city or throughout the province to join in discussions as if they were sitting in the room.
The fourth and most of the fifth floors will showcase the Institute for Molecular Medicine and Health, which includes the Centre for Gene Therapeutics and is a prototype for the University's new revolution in health sciences education and research. The two floors will contain a variety of offices, wet laboratories and a biotechnology incubator.
This facility will help ensure McMaster continues to grow as a leading centre in gene therapy, says Jack Gauldie, holder of the John Bienenstock Chair in Molecular Medicine, head of IMMH and chair of the Department of Pathology.
The Centre for Gene Therapeutics, begun in 1996, already has an impressive track record for investigating, creating and implementing ways to use genes as medicines in infectious diseases, cancer and disease of the lung. The IMMH will promote “bench to bedside” research that is designed to decrease the time it takes medical discoveries to move from the research laboratory to the doctor's office.
The rest of the fifth floor will be used for a research incubator. An interior atrium will add a dramatic design statement, flooding the top floors with natural light.
Funds for the construction of the building are expected from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the SuperBuild fund of the government of Ontario, Hamilton Health Sciences and McMaster University, as well as private donors.
Photo caption: An artist's rendering of the Centre for Learning & Discovery addition to the McMaster Health Sciences Centre
