Pelotonia Research Center
Courtesy of The Ohio State University
The Pelotonia Research Center is an interdisciplinary facility designed to retain and attract world-class talent and solve critical challenges in the health and life sciences space. The Center was named in recognition of Pelotonia’s partnership and philanthropic support for accelerating innovative cancer research at Ohio State, which has raised over $300 million for cancer research at the university since 2009.
Wet Lab Neighborhood
Courtesy of The Ohio State University
Each 3,500-sf research neighborhood, like this wet lab neighborhood, is flanked by a series of closed-door, light-tight laboratory support rooms, bringing the total space per neighborhood to 6,500 sf.
Write-Up Area
Courtesy of The Ohio State University
Desks in this graduate student write-up area are located just outside the controlled environment of the wet labs. Interior glass walls not only put science on display but allow daylight to spill into the bench space.
The vision of biomedical research as a collective effort is resoundingly clear in the $237.5 million Pelotonia Research Center, the first building to be completed in the 350-plus-acre Carmenton district on the campus of The Ohio State University (Ohio State) in Columbus. Opened in May 2023, the center integrates almost 100,000 sf of wet labs, 25,000 sf of computational labs, and 20,000 sf of core labs in a single facility designed to host interdisciplinary collaborations and public-private initiatives that focus on solving some of the most critical health challenges. With life science as the backbone of the research endeavor, current projects range from modeling cancer progressions to 3D printing of patient-specific anatomic models.
When the planning effort began in 2018, it was guided by three prevailing design concepts: fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, locating analytics and computational teams in close proximity, and significantly increasing the availability of modern wet lab space adaptable to unknown future research directions.
“Increasingly complex problems require increasingly complex and collaborative teams of specialists,” says Courtney Mankowski, director of Research Infrastructure and Strategic Initiatives for Ohio State’s Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge. “Recognizing that the best ideas come from working together, we needed to rethink the college-based model of ownership and building design. As a land-grant institution, we also sought to accentuate the impact of Ohio State research by increasing our commercialization and entrepreneurial capabilities and building strategic partnerships to drive economic growth in our state.”
Building Organization
The 305,000-sf Pelotonia Research Center comprises a four-story computational wing joined to a five-story main building with two basement levels that house the vivarium and interstitial floor. The main entrance is through a covered plaza at the ground level of the computational wing. A glass-walled connector leads into the first wet lab block, a 307-by-122-foot rectangle, organized into three, 3,500-sf open yet interconnected research neighborhoods per floor. The expansive open labs are flanked on either side by a series of closed-door, light-tight laboratory support rooms, bringing the total space per neighborhood to about 6,500 sf.
The neighborhoods are arranged around research themes that involve investigators from different fields of study across Ohio State’s 15 colleges. A gene therapy project could draw biomedical engineers from the College of Engineering to work alongside neurosurgeons and ophthalmologists from the College of Medicine. Team sizes generally range from four to 10 investigators, depending on the research focus.
The labs and support rooms are designed to be discipline neutral, gaining significant flexibility from an overhead utilities scheme that facilitates reconfiguration to fit new research needs. These schemes can accommodate new equipment or space alterations, for example, changing bench orientations from north-south to east-west and vice versa.
“A lab today could have a cardiovascular focus, and 15 years from now it could be used for microelectronics,” says Mankowski.
Spreading the support space to either side of the main wet lab facilitates the creation of smaller contained environments for specialized activities while retaining proximity to the primary lab bench. Mankowski points out that it’s also easier to implement control mechanisms for these smaller contained environments than for a larger contiguous space.
As part of its overall energy optimization plan, Ohio State de-emphasized the number of fume hoods and cold rooms, prioritizing shared use. Energy-consuming “giants,” such as minus-80-degree freezers, are consolidated in linear equipment hallways that also afford east-west passage through the building.
Offices
Notably absent from the wet labs are write-up spaces and offices, the result of a deliberate decision to remove them from the controlled environment. Write-up desks are located just outside the labs, separated by an interior glass wall that not only puts science on display but allows daylight to spill into the bench space from two directions. Also glass-walled with sliding doors, the 90-sf offices for principal investigators line both east and west perimeters of the building. In between are workstation clusters, semi-private cubicle spaces for lab managers or higher-level postdocs, and huddle rooms.
Housing a kitchenette, lounge, lobby, and elevators, the connector to the computational wing serves as a central gathering spot that offers a multitude of opportunities for interaction on every floor.
“The floor layouts were intentionally crafted to enhance possibilities for creative collision among members of our research community while also promoting construction and cost efficiencies,” says Mankowski.
Computational Wing
Two key features of the computational labs are digital connectivity and daylight. At first glance, these dry labs on each of the wing’s four floors might look like a typical open office, but they are distinguished by their robust fiber optic backbone and abundant natural light.
In contrast to the researchers in the wet labs, who are more transient in their workspaces, these researchers sit at their desks watching multiple monitors attached to their computers for long periods of time throughout the day. Analyzing massive data sets from hospital systems and patient records, they are modeling disease progressions, mining genomic data for potential treatment targets, and using AI and other tools to advance the science.
“In order to process all that data, they need super-fast transfer speeds,” says Mankowski. “We also wanted to give them a comfortable environment with lots of natural light.”
Ease of Operation
The basement houses a vivarium and six core laboratories, including imaging, physiology, and microscopy. The concrete slab they all rest on is separate from the building’s mechanical foundation, to meet vibration criteria of 2,000 mips and provide further buffers against noise and vibration.
The vivarium incorporates many design elements that streamline operations in its stringently controlled environment. Prime among them is the interstitial level that allows all maintenance to take place overhead, minimizing research disruptions and obviating the need for service personnel to enter the rooms below. Hallways measuring 8 feet wide accommodate extra-large equipment. A straight pathway leading from the service elevator into the various storage rooms simplifies the distribution of supplies while avoiding traffic in sensitive areas.
The goal of providing ease of operation extends throughout the building. Shared access at the loading dock for biohazard disposal, chemical delivery, and storage rooms eliminates the need for each space to have its own waste control room. The shared arrangement allows the environmental health and safety team to manage disposal with an external contractor, confining untrained outside employees to a designated area of the building.
“This also makes it easier for the researchers themselves,” says Mankowski, adding, “We see compliance as an area that contributes to ease of operations. The easier we can make it for people to do things, quickly and in compliance, daily and safely, the less time it will take to perform required activities.”
Partnerships
Further emphasizing the concept of research as a team sport, Ohio State is building on critical industry partnerships that will increase access to the center’s cutting-edge equipment and wet labs for private companies in the Columbus region, filling a gap for the region’s burgeoning life sciences sector.
“We are currently renting out one of our neighborhoods and two of the basement core laboratories for that purpose,” says Mankowski.
The center also offers onsite consultations from both internal and external resource providers to support researchers in their endeavors. The university’s Office of Technology and Digital Innovation (OTDI) and the Enterprise for Research, Innovation, and Knowledge (ERIK’s) commercialization and licensing team are sited nearby. Its technology licensing officers hold daily office hours for collaborating with investigators and hosting meetings with external partners to develop licensed technologies. The OTDI, in partnership with the Ohio Supercomputer Center and Amazon Web Services, offers consultation and data storage options for research.
An Operating Model that Future-Proofs
As the university’s first truly interdisciplinary research facility, the Pelotonia Research Center is operated by ERIK, a significant departure from the standard practice of allocating, constructing, and governing space by individual colleges. ERIK works to expand curiosity-driven research and creative expression, further develop the research community, and grow the innovation ecosystem to address societal challenges and improve communities locally and globally.
This structure led to a new operating model, which reflects the actual costs of running comparable research-heavy facilities, as well as an escrow account for deferred and preventative maintenance, an issue Mankowski points out is common in academia.
For further future-proofing, ERIK F&A (facilities and administrative) expenditures generated by faculty research conducted in the building will be allocated to a separate escrow account that will provide the ability to flex and “invest in the next great thing our research community needs,” she says.
To preserve a robust stream of extramural funding, ERIK also developed a metric for space productivity that will be applied to each neighborhood, rather than to individual researchers.
“Implementing the metric at the neighborhood level reinforces the concepts of team science and that collaboration can take place among researchers regardless of seniority. It will be applied with flexibility to support the interdisciplinary nature of the building,” concludes Mankowski.
By Nicole Zaro Stahl
