Northeastern’s Burlington campus expanding with new mixed-use research building

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By Greg St. Martin

News at Northeastern

Northeastern’s Innovation Campus in Burlington, Massachusetts, is growing.

The university on Wednesday broke ground on a new, three-story, 104,000 square-foot facility designed to increase collaboration among students, faculty, and government and industry partners.

The facility will feature research labs, a meeting area for workshops, and a makerspace with a suite of high-tech equipment, including 3-D printers and other prototyping technology. It is expected to be completed in late spring 2019.

“On this campus, everything we do is research partnerships,” David Luzzi, vice president for Northeastern’s Innovation Campus and vice provost for research innovation and development, told representatives from local and state government, industry, the Massachusetts National Guard, and others in attendance at the groundbreaking ceremony. “This new building is going to expand our capacity to grow this work.”

Brigadier General Mark A. Merlino, assistant adjutant general of the Massachusetts National Guard, spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

The facility will become the new home for the university’s Biopharmaceutical Analysis Training Laboratory, where scientists, technicians, and managers in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries get hands-on training in liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry analysis. The building will also feature a roof-level observation deck that researchers and others can access to monitor activities at Northeastern’s netted drone-flight facility next door, which is 1.8 million cubic feet.

Northeastern’s Innovation Campus is anchored by the George J. Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security, which fosters collaborative research aimed at helping communities, critical systems, and infrastructure withstand, respond to, and recover from catastrophes. Researchers in the labs and centers at the institute conduct research in areas such as security, nanoscale printing, and structural testing for buildings and bridges. Earlier this year, the Army Research Laboratory located its Northeast regional hub at the Kostas Research Institute.

The three-story, 104,000 square-foot facility is expected to be completed in spring 2019. Photo credit: EYP Architecture & Engineering.

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