From Vacant To Vibrant: 2000th Person Moves To U-M's New Research Campus As More Scientists Are Recruited

Team from Harvard helps North Campus Research Complex hit key milestone

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Feb. 19, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Less than three years after the first person moved in, the University of Michigan has transformed a vacant former pharmaceutical company campus into a vibrant hub for research – an achievement marked this week with the move of the 2,000 ^th person to the site.

Today, a former Harvard University researcher and his team are unpacking their laboratory equipment and setting up experiments in their new home at U-M's North Campus Research Complex or NCRC.

They're the latest in a series of top-level recruitments U-M has been able to make since its 2009 purchase of the site, which includes 2 million square feet of space across 28 buildings and 173 acres of land. 

"How fortuitous and fortunate that the 2000th person to move to the NCRC is a faculty recruit from another great institution," says NCRC executive director David Canter. "Mixing together biologists and engineers, university research and commercial companies, and established faculty and new blood is the very essence of the NCRC's mission."

The newly recruited team is led by Zhong Wang, Ph.D., a stem cell and epigenetics researcher specializing in heart cells. He's joining the U-M Medical School's Department of Cardiac Surgery, and will work with the many other U-M Cardiovascular Research Center members based at NCRC.

In addition to heart disease, researchers at NCRC focus on cancer, health policy, emergency medicine, bioinformatics and the intersection of engineering and medicine. The NCRC population also includes hundreds of staff whose work supports U-M research, and employees of small companies that have spun out of U-M research.

U-M has invested in the creation of 10 shared scientific facilities at NCRC, such as DNA sequencing and advanced microscopes.

1 2 3 4 Next › Last »