W ORCESTER Guangping Gao, an accomplished scientist, makes the trip at least one time a day, and sometimes as many as five.

Each time he wants to confer with a colleague at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, each time he walks from his lab on Plantation Street to the main campus, he loses 10 or 15 minutes.

It's not much of a sacrifice in the name of science, acknowledged Mr. Gao, director of the school's Gene Therapy Center, which is developing a treatment for a fatal condition called Canavan disease.

But it's also far from ideal. Soon, Mr. Gao will move into the Albert Sherman Center, a vast, $400 million research building UMass Medical School constructed to double its research capacity and bring dozens of scientists under one roof.

I believe moving for us will make a huge difference, Mr. Gao said. I think this move will speed up our collaboration.

The Sherman Center was designed with collaboration in mind. The design team even made a staircase a central feature of the 500,000-square-foot, nine-story structure, to encourage chance meetings. They put wet and dry laboratory spaces on the same floors, so researchers working at lab benches and researchers crunching data on computers would be able to mingle.

This building is meant to bring people together, said Mark N. Dolny, associate principal with Architectural Resources Cambridge, which designed the building.

Set to open this month, the Sherman Center will be the new hub of the medical school campus, which also includes a main building and the Aaron Lazare Medical Research Building. The Sherman Center has ample lab space, cozy student meeting rooms, an airy dining area, a new fitness center and what Dr. Michael F. Collins, chancellor of the medical school, calls classy spaces where school leaders can try to impress potential donors.

UMass' goal for the Sherman Center is as huge as the building itself.

We're going to change the course of the history of diseases, Dr. Collins said.

Read more here:
Research takes center stage

Comments are closed.