A HISTORIC ACQUISITION

West Campus Opens New Vistas for the Life Sciences

West Campus will house interdisciplinary research institutes.

With the acquisition of the former North American headquarters of Bayer Healthcare in 2007, Yale University expanded its education and research infrastructure by more than 50 percent. The 136-acre property sits just a few miles from downtown New Haven and features twenty buildings with more than 434,000 square feet of laboratory space. Now known as West Campus, this historic acquisition complements the University’s already robust investments in science and medicine and promises to catapult Yale forward to the leading edge of biomedical discovery. “Yale is in the midst of a boom in the expansion of its science and medical facilities,” said President Richard C. Levin. “The addition of this ready-made, state-of-the-art research space will allow that growth to accelerate at an unprecedented level—potentially making it possible for Yale scientists to develop new discoveries, inventions, and cures years earlier. The laboratories at the West Campus will enable us to undertake research programs that we would not have had space to develop for a decade or more.”

The West Campus opens a new frontier for Yale science. Its six main research facilities house biology and chemistry laboratories and equipment for high-throughput screening of chemical and biological compounds. Connected by tree-lined walkways and underground tunnels, the buildings are in close proximity to one another, facilitating collaboration among researchers. The campus also contains a large conference center with a 250-seat auditorium, a library, dining hall, and conference rooms. This complex will form the center of West Campus life, encouraging everyday connections between faculty and staff.

Programmatically, West Campus will be structured to encourage new ideas and methods for approaching key questions in the most critical areas of biomedical science. The University has established advanced instrumentation cores in chemical screening, genomics, and RNAi gene knockout. Housing centralized teams, each core will consolidate research skills and specialized equipment to support the work of scientists all across the University.

Building on the exceptional facilities already in place, West Campus is also developing plans to house interdisciplinary research institutes in cancer biology, chemical biology, microbial diversity, systems biology, and cell biology. This configuration will bring together leading scientists to chart new avenues of exploration and advance the pace of research. Faculty recruitment is already under way, and in September 2008, Yale welcomed James Rothman to the University as the Fergus F. Wallace Professor of Biomedical Sciences and the chair of the School of Medicine’s Department of Cell Biology. An internationally renowned expert on membrane trafficking, Rothman will lead the Institute for Cell Biology.

The acquisition of West Campus comes at an auspicious time. Biomedical science is advancing at an exponential rate and new discoveries world-wide have illuminated the myriad links between different fields. Increasingly, breakthroughs in one area, such as cell biology, fuel another, like systems biology or cancer research. This emerging paradigm underscores the importance of the mission of West Campus. As the newest arm of an increasingly collaborative, interdisciplinary scientific enterprise, it will facilitate connections among faculty members and dramatically support their ability to make significant contributions to cutting-edge biomedical research. The knowledge gained will strengthen ties between basic science and disease-oriented research, and potentially result in revolutionary tools for disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.