A Slice of Life: From the Ground Up

Celebrating Three Centuries of Biology at Ohio State

When the shovels hit the dirt on Friday, November 2 to celebrate the construction of the Stanley J. Aronoff Laboratory of Biological Sciences-there was joy in Mudville!

The site at 318 W. 12th Avenue does rather resemble a mud hole-but it is our long-awaited mud hole, out of which a great building will rise, and we love it!

Construction, which began in October, seems long overdue for those who have been waiting, mostly patiently, for a long time. It will be a great boon to the research capability and capacity of those who have struggled-and, against odds, succeeded-to conduct leading-edge research in their respective areas.

When completed in 2003, this five-story, 107,000 square foot $26,700,000 building, will provide modern research laboratories and comfortable office space for College of Biological Sciences' faculty, staff and students in the departments of Entomology; Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology; and Plant Biology.

"This high-tech laboratory building will facilitate the modern biological research carried out by our faculty, staff, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers," says Rich Hall, Interim Dean of the College of Biological Sciences. He emphasizes that, "Just as importantly, it will enhance our teaching mission and provide an environment to nurture increased undergraduate research activity."

In addition to department offices, the building will contain 32 research laboratories, along with cold rooms, autoclave rooms, darkrooms, instrumentation rooms, and other research support spaces. The hallways in the laboratory portion of the building function as linear equipment zones housing safety devices and shared equipment. The building also contains faculty, staff and student offices; interaction spaces; and conference rooms.

The building will be a hub of activity-research interests run the gamut of 21st Century biology. Researchers in the building will study such things as insect behavior and physiology; restoration ecology; metal-absorbing properties of plants; metabolic engineering; environmental impact of introduced species; and movement of toxins through aquatic food chains. They will examine effects of global climate change on forest ecosystems; plant development, structure and function; ecological impact of transgenic plants; habitat fragmentation; space biology; and social behavior in animals.

The new facility, named for former Ohio Senate President and long-time supporter of the University, Stanley J. Aronoff of Cincinnati, is an important component of the Biological Sciences Complex. It is the second phase of the three-phase process of renovating and developing the buildings in the B&Z area. Phase one was the construction of the Biological Sciences Greenhouses; phase three is the renovation of the historic Botany and Zoology Building itself, which is scheduled to begin in about two years.

These buildings in the B&Z area, along with the 10-story Biological Sciences Building; the 10-story Riffe Research Laboratory; the Museum of Biological Diversity; the Plant Biotechnology Center; the Aquatic Ecology Laboratory; and the Rothenbuhler Honeybee Genetics Laboratory, will strengthen our capacity to perform our research and teaching mission at an exceptionally high level.