Consolidating Resources into a Centralized, Shared Core Facility for Multidisciplinary Research

Penn State University’s Millennium Science Complex is a state-of-the-art 297,000-sf facility that combines the Materials Research Institute with the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences to create an interdisciplinary research center for advancing science through diverse relationships. The facility serves as a valuable equipment and resource hub for thousands of researchers from Penn State and other organizations—including academic, government labs, and industry—who are at the leading edge of materials science, nanofabrication, and other disciplines.

The futuristic-looking complex consists of two integrated wings. The north wing is dedicated to materials characterization, modeling, and fabrication, while the west wing houses life science and neural engineering research. The two wings strategically intersect to support interactions between the two disciplines, with extensive use of flexible labs and a shared instrumentation core.

“The space was designed from scratch,” says Robert Cornwall, managing director of the Materials Research Institute. “So we took every piece of equipment that the faculty had, and all the equipment we anticipated purchasing, and designed each lab to accommodate it.”

The facility’s cutting-edge capabilities and collaborative operating model have made it hugely popular with researchers and students alike. Many researchers at other universities and private corporations prefer to pay usage fees to access the facilities at Penn State rather than spend the capital required to build their own. It has also become clear that the people are at least as important as the equipment, if not more. Without the right people, the core facility model does not work. 

“People really want to be here,” says Cornwall. “Students and faculty are coming from all over the world. About 15 percent of our work is coming from companies and other universities. Penn State, in total, surpasses $800 million a year in research expenditures—more than $100 million of which is related to use of our core facilities—with fees for internal and external use. It is not all booked 100 percent of the time, but it is 24/7 space utilization. Once you are authorized to use it, you can go in and use the space any time you want.”

Consolidating programs previously located in multiple facilities, the materials wing now serves 28 faculty members, 75 Ph.D. researchers, 60 staff members, and 150 graduate students.

“One of the things that we figured out early on is that we had to change the way scientists work. Instead of a lab that faculty throw their arms around and called their own, in this building we use shared lab space with other faculty and the core facilities,” says Cornwall.

Materials and Fabrication

The 20,000-sf materials characterization space contains 15 ultra-low-vibration instrument labs, each built on a separate 24-inch slab and surrounded by a rubber gasket and divided walls.  They are essentially little buildings within a building.  

The Materials Characterization Lab houses approximately $45 million dollars in characterization equipment—including electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, thermal analysis, and X-ray diffraction—and is supported by a staff of 20 people who are solely dedicated to running the equipment and facility.

“These staff members are Ph.D. researchers, engineers, and lab techs whose job is to maintain the equipment and train students and other people how to use the equipment themselves,” says Cornwall.

More than 1,000 unique users generate $1.7 million annually in billable research at the facility. Likewise, the 10,000-sf nanofabrication facility, with an accompanying 6000-sf sub-fab, attracts another 500 unique users annually and generates about $1.5 million in business, with 15 to 20 percent of both facilities’ income derived from external users.

“Our rates are primarily based on staff, maintenance, and operating costs. According to government regulations, we can’t use the fees charged to replace or buy new equipment as we grow,” says Cornwall.

The Right People

One of the keys to successful development and operation of the facility was hiring a dedicated subject matter expert who already knew how to build and run cleanrooms and could represent the faculty throughout the entire planning and construction process to make sure they got the space they needed.

“That person—who is now our facility manager—went to every faculty meeting, every meeting with the architect, every planning and construction meeting for two-and-a-half years. That was huge, because the faculty didn’t have to go to all those meetings. He knew what they needed and how to make sure the construction served the science,” says Cornwall.

The facility manager now works with the university’s physical plant staff to maintain and operate the infrastructure and equipment on a day-to-day basis, since they are not specially trained to do so.

“Hiring experienced people at all levels is crucial. There are so many capabilities and modes for the equipment, including complex computation and analysis capabilities on many of the machines. You really need people who are experts at operating them,” says Cornwall.

One example of these “expert operators” is the person Penn State hired to run the FEI Titan™ transmission electron microscope (TEM).

“He was part of the team that developed the correction technology that the machine uses and knows more about it than probably anyone else,” says Cornwall. “He’s like the Porsche driver of the scope. He can get images and information out of it that even surprise the manufacturer.”

One of the benefits of operating a world-class facility with a highly experienced staff and high throughput is that it also encourages vendors to engage in mutually beneficial partnerships.

“When you have a big user base like we do, you can forge preferred partnerships with vendors, because they understand that when students graduate they’ll go on to use the tools they know. FEI is a great example. We currently have five of their tools and are looking to upgrade our cryo-TEM capabilities in the near future. These relationships allow us to do things smaller universities can’t, like bundle services, or have our scientists work closely with their engineering staff,” says Cornwall.

Managing Core Facilities Safely

The shared core and nanofabrication facilities also necessitated a change in how lab space is managed. With a continually changing workforce of rotating researchers and grad students and a fabrication facility housing hazardous gases along with multiple users, it’s critical that everyone understands the chemicals present and their related safety protocols.

“Our safety program is something that we have taken very seriously, and it drives a lot of our research practices now. We went from having much of the equipment on a pen-and-paper log six years ago, to having a secure system that locks out untrained users and staff. So you can’t use the facility until you are safety trained and authorized.”

While this safety and training approach was originally developed for use in the facility’s cleanroom, Penn State is now rolling it out across the rest of the university’s labs.

Learning Curves

While the total cost of the building was originally estimated at $180 million, additional requirements and capabilities were identified as programming evolved. The result was a total cost of $230 million.

“We certainly went through a big learning process,” says Cornwall. “During the planning stages, the architect and designers didn’t believe the space was a hazardous space, even though we had extremely dangerous chemicals going in. So midway through construction we had to add on a hazardous materials service corridor outside the foundation. That was a big add-on cost.”

The sub-fabrication facility, which supports the cleanroom and resident equipment, was also a significant add-on space that was not in the original plans.

“About two-and-a-half years into the design, we convinced them that the sub-fabrication space was required, or we wouldn’t be able to move in the equipment we had and build the facility we needed,” says Cornwall.

The designers also underestimated the airflow required for the cleanroom, which resulted in needing to run additional air shafts through offices and other unplanned spaces.

“We thought we had excess air capacity, but the density of equipment increased, even though we thought we were pretty packed. That led to certain sections of the building using more air than anticipated, so some rebalancing had to be done; because they missed some things that were very hard to modify post-build. That required some big changes.” says Cornwall.

When it comes to offering recommendations to other organizations engaged in similar projects, Cornwall emphasizes the need to provide enough office space for group-sized growth over time. Researchers in the building believe that a factor to their continued and often-times growing success is the vastly improved infrastructure and ready access to the core user facilities. Other key elements for success include having strong enough leadership to drive changes and ensuring you have the right people involved at every level of operations.

“You always need to think about your operations and if you have the right people. When you’re enabling research, you really need to have a dedicated expert involved who understands the tech requirements and can live the job, because faculty and administrators don’t have the time or resources.”

By Johnathon Allen