A new building hasn’t been constructed on UW-Milwaukee’s campus since the opening of Lubar Hall in the late 90s. But now, a new building has sprung up on campus, and this one has plans to change the future.
The Kenwood Interdisciplinary Research Complex (KIRC) opened to the public Friday. This $80 million building, which was funded mostly through donations, is an area for scientists to further their research and work on projects united under one roof.
In the basement, physicists study properties of surface and matter and work with state of the art technology to develop new materials.
The High Performance Computing Data Center, known as Mortimer, is located on the first floor. Mortimer helps with research in STEM disciplines, Digital Humanities, and bioinformatics. The first floor also holds five Active Learning Classrooms equipped with some of the latest gadgets in technology.
Up on the second floor is the main office for the Department of Physics, along with the Shimadzu Laboratory for Advanced, Applied and Analytical Chemistry. There is also an area where the Milwaukee Institute for Drug Discovery works on early-stage research with innovative new drugs.
The third and fourth floors host a wide variety of departments. Here, students study proteins and viruses, and grow unique crystals. Some students will be able to work with local area high school students as they search for new pulsars using the largest radio in Puerto Rico. The Leonard E. Parker Center for Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics also finds its home on the fourth floor.
On the top floor of the KIRC, students and faculty of the Environmental Health Sciences Department study environmental determinants of disease. Sarah Barlett, a PhD student working under Todd Miller, is conducting research on the consequences of contaminated water and air. She says the KIRC now “creates a community” for the researchers, where before there was “not a lot of cohesiveness.”
“(The KIRC) greatly encourages working with the rest of my research team, (and provides) access to important resources all while being a short bike ride from my dorm room,” freshmen Michael Bartz said.
With the KIRC officially open, researchers are excited to see what this new chapter in UWM’s science department has in store.
Click here to view photos from the 2015 KIRC Open House.