“The numbers associated with hiring faculty and start-up packages for research, those are smaller numbers,” Buehrens said. “By anybody’s measure, Allston is going to be a very expensive undertaking.”
Though Hyman declined to give estimated figures for the cost of the construction, he said that the University will be fund-raising for the new Allston initiatives.
“We’ve already begun fund-raising for the Stem Cell Institute,” he said.
Hyman added that there was a “sense of urgency” for the creation of a building to house stem cell research because of federal funding regulations that mandate segregated space for research on human embryonic stem cells.
“Life is very cumbersome for our [stem cell] scientists,” Hyman said. “To have a separate facility with their own equipment will really facilitate their research. If Doug Melton or one of his students wants to use a piece of equipment in another building, they can’t touch it if it was bought with federal money.”
Hyman also said that the Allston stem cell initiative is essential for maintaining ground-breaking stem cell research.
“California has had this effort to provide state money for stem cell scientists,” Hyman said. “Our answer is to have great intellectual cohesion and in that sense, shared facilities are very important.”
Melton declined to comment yesterday.
BLUEPRINTS IN WHITE PAPERS
The report stated that one group of initiatives—Global Health, Quantitative Health and Social Sciences, and Health Policy—should be located “within or immediately adjacent” to the Harvard School of Public Health’s (SPH) future campus in Allston.
SPH is in the middle of its own Allston planning process, though some professors have voiced concerns that moving to Allston will disrupt research collaborations with HMS, which is currently located next door to SPH in the Longwood Medical Area.
In an attempt to garner support for the Allston move, University President Lawrence H. Summers told SPH faculty at a meeting April 13 that the school would be able to maintain facilities at its current Longwood location, as well as populate new buildings in Allston.
Two more of the “white paper” initiatives, the Environment and the Quantum Science and Engineering initiative, could be housed effectively in the current science campus north of the Science Center, according to the report.
The Northwest Building, a 470,000 square foot facility, and the Laboratory for Integrated Science and Engineering, a 135,000 square foot facility, are both currently under construction in the North Yard.
In addition to the first wave of programs identified for Allston, the task force indicated that a second group of initiatives is still in development, which will include projects on Global Neglected Diseases, Health Policy, Innovative Computing and Origins of Life.
“The Task Force believes that these initiatives are not yet ready for large scale funding or space from the University,” the report stated.
These initiatives will be given seed money in order to expand their proposals, Hyman said.
The task force’s report also suggested that another call for a second round of proposals may be made in the future.
—Staff writer May Habib can be reached at habib@fas.harvard.edu.