Colorado State University officially opened in May an innovative building designed to bring businesses and disease experts and other biomedical scientists together to optimize collective creativity and research around product development.
The 72,000-square-foot, $53 million Research Innovation Center is a hybrid of business office space, university researcher offices and state-of-the-art bioscience laboratories, conceptualized to build university partnerships with CSU startup businesses and existing businesses. The facility will house efforts to develop, perfect, analyze and market vaccines, tests and treatments for a variety of diseases. Targeted diseases include those that infect and kill millions of people and animals around the world each year, such as West Nile virus, drug-resistant tuberculosis, yellow fever, dengue fever, hantavirus, plague and tularemia.
“The Research Innovation Center is a centerpiece of our commitment to promote collaboration between the public and 
private sectors, providing a hub for faculty partnerships with business in the development of new technologies and innovations that will benefit our society,” said Tony Frank, President of Colorado State University.
One floor of the building will serve as a biosciences business incubator, fostering startup companies that will help translate university research into new products that address unmet medical needs or improve the quality of life.
“Colorado State University’s status as a pioneer in disease research is greatly enhanced by our ability to make scientific discoveries meaningful to people and animals who suffer from diseases,” said Dr. Bill Farland, Vice President for Research at CSU. “This building will provide a hub for the brightest minds working to prevent, treat and cure diseases to come together and develop solutions that can be quickly translated into the marketplace to save lives.”
The building was constructed to LEED gold standards, including green features recently recognized by Xcel Energy. Those features include a hot-water preheating system at the boiler that uses boiler exhaust to heat water for the building. The building’s efficient design also reduces natural gas use. The Research Innovation Center construction was funded through University-issued bonds.
