Industry News

Canon celebrated the opening of its 700,000-sf cartridge manufacturing facility in Newport News, Va., on May 1, 2009. Construction began on the project in early summer of 2008. The facility will begin producing cartridges for laser printers by year-end 2009. Canon is also planning to build an R&D center for automated and robotic manufacturing technologies in Newport News.

The Department of Energy will break ground in May of 2009 on a neutrino laboratory near International Falls, Minn. Housing physics research for Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Minnesota, the $250 million facility is supported by $40.1 million funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The facility will be named NuMI Off-Axis Electron Neutrino Appearance and will include a neutrino detector and laboratory sunk 40 feet below ground.

President Barack Obama pledged to direct three percent of the United States’ gross domestic product to scientific research and development at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences in April of 2009. The $420 billion in funding will support research in areas such as the space program, sustainable energy, software development, and advanced prosthetics.

Imperial College London, in partnership with Imperial College Healthcare NHS, broke ground on a £99 million biomedical research facility in April of 2009. Slated for completion in late 2011, the six-story building will be part of the planned Academic Health Science Center in London. Housing 450 researchers, the facility will provide laboratories for translational research in cardiovascular disease, arthritis, diabetes, and obesity.

The University of Texas Dallas is engaged in over $130 million in campus construction. The projects include: