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News Release

Last modified: Thursday, April 11, 2002

Myers Hall to be rededicated Friday

A decade-long planning and construction effort will be formally completed Friday (April 12) with the rededication of Myers Hall on the Indiana University Bloomington campus.

IU President Myles Brand will preside at the 4:30 p.m. ceremony to be held in the auditorium of Myers Hall. Bloomington Chancellor Sharon Stephens Brehm, College of Arts and Sciences Dean Kumble R. Subbaswamy, and George Walker, vice president for research and dean of the Graduate School, will make remarks, as will Rudolf Raff, director of the Indiana Molecular Biology Institute, student representative Susan Kline-Smith, and Jeffrey Palmer, chair of the Department of Biology.

Myers Hall was originally completed as the Medical Building in 1936, and it was named for Dean Burton D. Myers in 1958. It provides an elegant presence along Third Street with its limestone carvings and its handsome exterior design.

The Indiana Molecular Biology Institute was founded at IU in 1983 to create a campus-wide mechanism to foster research excellence in disciplines of the life sciences that depend on the tools of molecular biology. Faculty fellows of the institute have been drawn from several departments and schools.

As the need became apparent for more modern research space to expand molecular biology facilities, the institute sought to create these laboratories on the Bloomington campus. Through an exchange of space between the Medical Sciences Program and the Department of Biology, Medical Sciences was moved to remodeled quarters in Jordan Hall. This exchange made possible the complete renovation of Myers Hall as a dedicated research building. Currently, faculty and graduate student researchers from Biology, Medical Sciences, Chemistry and Anthropology are housed in Myers Hall.

Detailed planning for the new building began in the early 1990s, with funding coming from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Indiana University. The cost of the project was about $14.5 million. The goal was to build state-of-the-art laboratories to meet growing research needs and to provide resources for research training for graduate, postdoctoral and undergraduate students. The renovated building provides modern laboratory space for as many as 15 faculty-directed research groups, joint-use facilities (for advanced microscopy, DNA sequencing, X-ray crystallography and plant genetics), conference rooms and a large lecture hall.

Myers Hall was vacant for about two years as a result of the construction. It was back in service at the beginning of the spring semester in January.

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