Latest Reports

Bringing biosafety laboratories into compliance with the BMBL 5^th Edition’s “zero airflow reversal” clause requires assessing risk appropriately, analyzing the impact of a pressure envelope on the facility, installing appropriate ventilation and control systems, and implementing new control strategies for practical testing.

Lease arrangements for office and laboratory space have historically been mostly for smaller companies, but are now becoming increasingly popular as a way for large research institutions to find an entrée into or expand in congested and expensive urban centers quickly, cost-effectively, and with more flexibility than building new.

The five-story Wisconsin Energy Institute (WEI) serves as an interdisciplinary center of research on alternative energy, and as a living example of sustainable design.

Founders of the J. Craig Venter Institute’s new 45,000-sf laboratory facility in La Jolla, Calif., aspire to create a technological marvel that not only defies the tradition of energy-intensive biological laboratories, but that also initiates a new generation of facilities that have both low environmental impact and an excellent working environment. In its founder’s words, the Institute is “a unique design that will meld the environmental philosophies of our genomics research with the sustainability goals that I believe must be part of all of our lives.”

The following is a compilation of responses to a survey that asked individuals responsible for planning, design, operations, and maintenance of high-containment facilities to rank their priorities for 2014 and make open-ended comments regarding those priorities. The issues identified in this survey will be the focus of Tradeline’s upcoming conference—The 2014 International Conference on Biocontainment Facilities—on April 10‐11 in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The respondents ranked their overall priorities as follows: