The University of Idaho Board of Regents approved a $3.5 million investment into planning the first academic building to be built on the university campus in 15 years.
The Integrated Research and Innovation Center will begin construction in 2014, and is slated for completion in Fall 2016. The building is UI’s first step in reaching its goal of becoming a national research university, according to UI.
The IRIC will be the first research facility of its kind in the state of Idaho.
UI’s goal is to have $150 million in research expenditures by the year 2020, according to the UI website.
“It will be a $150 million total for the university,” said Jack McIver, vice president for research and economic development. “A lot of it would come from competitive awards, but I am hoping a lot more comes from the private sector also.”
McIver said the building will be located next to the quad where the old Naval ROTC building was. That means the building will be in between the College of Natural Resources and the Archie Phinney Hall.
McIver said the $3.5 million designated to start the project will be used for the preconstruction phase of the building. This includes the prep work, blue prints and an assessment to give an accurate cost of how much the IRIC will be.
He said currently it is difficult for researchers from different disciplines at UI to work together and perform important research. The building will be a place where the researchers and scientists from all the colleges can work in unison and improve their research.
He said the ability for the IRIC to include all disciplines of research in one building is one of the most important features of the building.
The IRIC will house the best researchers and scientists that UI has to offer from its 10 colleges.
“Everybody will be eligible to compete to find space in the IRIC,” McIver said.
He said the resources for the IRIC will be spread out accordingly based on performance, but all colleges have an equal opportunity to be rewarded space for research.
The facility will have eight flexible laboratories, two dry lab clusters, two analytical instrumentation core spaces, two imaging computer core spaces and conferencing space for the researchers to work as a unit, according to UI.
John Fish can be reached at [email protected]