Industry News

The University of Pittsburgh is creating the John A. Swanson Center for Micro and Nano Systems with a gift of $1.4-million from the center's namesake. The center will be housed in the recently established four-laboratory John A. Swanson Institute for Technical Excellence, which will work in collaboration with the new center. The Center for Micro and Nano Systems will focus on applied research, giving companies and researchers access to technology, equipment and services for design, modeling and simulation, fabrication and systems integration.

The University of California, San Diego is planning to construct a new $50-million facility to house the Graduate Management School. The building is expected to open in autumn 2005.

Atlanta-based Leeman Architectural Woodwork, a maker of custom displays and counters, will consolidate three separate Fulton County facilities with a move to a planned 350,000-sf manufacturing distribution facility in Powder Springs. Total building cost is approximated at $22 per square foot. The facility is slated for completion in January 2004.

UC Berkeley began construction in March 2003 on the new $162.3-million Stanley Hall. Part of the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3), the facility will provide 275,000 sf on eight floors above ground and three floors below ground. Replacing the existing Stanley Hall, the interdisciplinary facility will not belong to a single department but instead will bring together biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, and engineering researchers.

EMD Pharmaceuticals, the U.S. subsidiary of Darmstadt, Germany-based Merck KGaA, will construct a $300-million biomanufacturing plant in Jena, Germany. The 200,000-sf facility will manufacture cancer drugs.