The University of Delaware’s STAR Campus on Monday broke ground on the new Biopharmaceutical Innovation Building. The building is slated to open in early 2020.
The 200,000-square-foot research facility will feature state-of-the-art laboratories and serve as the headquarters for the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL), which works to advance the industry and develop the next generation of workers.
The university has promoted the building as a way of helping Delaware stay at the forefront of the emerging biopharmaceutical industry.
Kelvin Lee, Gore Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, first came up with the idea, but imagined it as a much smaller 60,000-square foot space.
“The STAR Campus was truly a field of dreams,” UD President Dennis Assanis said, “a blank canvas on which we started painting the future of our University and our state. We wanted this to be a place where our strengths in teaching and research would intersect with the needs of our community and the world, where faculty and students and staff would work with innovators and entrepreneurs from throughout the region.”
Lee will lead the NIIMBL initiative, which has $70 million in federal funding and additional support from UD and other partners.
