By Louise Chu | Originally published on UCSF News
UC San Francisco (UCSF) is moving forward with plans to construct a new building at its Mission Bay campus to support its world-class neuroscience enterprise during a time of great opportunity for advancement in the field, following approval by the UC Regents on Thursday, March 24.
The building will bring together psychiatry bench lab research with other basic research in the neurosciences, as well as clinical and support spaces, to drive advances aimed at new treatments for disorders of the brain and nervous system. A primary goal is to fold basic research in psychiatry into the neuroscience program, placing top investigators in labs side by side, to accelerate understanding of the brain and build on that knowledge to develop treatments for psychiatric disorders, such as depression and schizophrenia.
With the addition of the proposed neurosciences building on Block 23A, UCSF Mission Bay would become home to one of the largest neuroscience complexes in the world.
Combined with the nearby Sandler Neurosciences Center and Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Hall, the neuroscience complex at UCSF Mission Bay will become one of the largest in the world. The building will be constructed on the current site of a parking lot on Block 23A, which is just north of Mission Hall, between Campus Way and Gene Friend Way and between Fourth Street and the Third Street Garage.
“UCSF’s vision for neurosciences at Mission Bay encompasses the full spectrum of research, including basic, clinical and translational research,” UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood, MBBS, said during Thursday’s meeting of the Regents committee on grounds and buildings. “This project represents a significant further investment by UCSF in the expanding neurosciences research program at Mission Bay.”
The Regents Committee on Grounds and Buildings unanimously approved UCSF’s request to allocate $21 million in campus funds to engage architecture and construction resources to begin planning for the 270,000-square-foot, six-story building.
This funding for preliminary planning is consistent with other projects, as a percentage of the total project budgets. This upfront investment in design will pay off in ensuring that UCSF delivers the building on time and on budget, as UCSF has done in previous projects, Hawgood said.
Pending budget, design and environmental approvals, construction is expected to begin in fall 2017.
Further coverage
- UCSF News: UC Regents approve preliminary plans for new UCSF neuroscience building
- San Francisco Business Journal: Meet, treat, grow: UCSF 'Sandler model' pushes neurosciences expansion
About UCSF Psychiatry
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service. UCSF Psychiatry has an organizational structure that crosses all major UCSF sites - Parnassus, Mission Bay, Laurel Heights, Mt. Zion, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, the San Francisco VA Health Care System, and UCSF Fresno.
About UCSF
UC San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic, biomedical, translational and population sciences; and a preeminent biomedical research enterprise. It also includes UCSF Health, which comprises two top-ranked hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco, and other partner and affiliated hospitals and healthcare providers throughout the Bay Area.
