Summer 1997
The University of Texas System Board of Regents, meeting in May at the Health Science Center, approved both the design and appropriation for a new Health Science Center research building to be located in the Texas Research Park.
Funding for the building was assured when the Board of Regents took official action to add $6 million from the UT System's Permanent University Fund to the $12 million raised in record time by the San Antonio business community. The fund-raising campaign was headed by former Gov. Dolph Briscoe Jr. and San Antonio businessman Sam Barshop.
John P. Howe III, MD, Health Science Center president, said the action represented a major advancement for the biosciences in this region. "In the South Texas Centers for Biology in Medicine, some of the finest researchers in the world will focus on the cure, and eventual elimination, of diseases that disproportionately affect our South Texas population."
Research in the new facility will focus primarily on diabetes, infectious disease, diseases of aging, bone research, immunology and cancer.
Project architects Kell Munoz Wigodsky revealed plans for the new building, which will be adjacent to the UT Institute of Biotechnology, a building that has received national recognition as a model for a research laboratory. In addition to the research facility, a complex of buildings will include a teleconference facility that is being developed in conjunction with The SBC Foundation.
Designated as a beta site, the building will feature the latest advances in videoconferencing and lab-to-lab telecommunications to provide a seamless communications system that will allow medical researchers to share research findings instantaneously.
