If space is the currency of research, then Emory is 325,000 square feet closer to a payoff in discovery. The Whitehead Biomedical Research Building, which opened in November, more than doubles research space in the medical school, with 150 labs and an open-module design to encourage interaction among researchers from a variety of disciplines.
Most of one floor is
dedicated to the Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, bringing together scientists from neurology, neurosurgery, pathology, and psychiatry. The building also houses researchers in human genetics, cell biology, physiology, pulmonary medicine, and digestive diseases.
In addition to space. another shared commodity is technology. The Center for Medical Genomics operates robotic equipment that extracts and stirs DNA, allowing researchers to accomplish in two weeks what would take six to nine months to do manually. A robotic freezer stores up to 1,000 bar-coded tissue samples, each deposited precisely with an automated arm.
Designed to house up to 130,000 small research animals (mostly mice), the building also has a pair of robotic cage washers (dubbed Oscar and Felix), which conserve energy, water, and chemicals and free staff from the repetitive, undesirable task of cage cleaning.
The building is one of the most environmentally progressive in the country, with special heat-recovery wheels saving $100,000 in energy costs per year and condensate-recovery units saving an estimated 2.5 million gallons of water per year.
The building was constructed and its labs furnished with funds from foundations created by members of the Joseph B. Whitehead family, who built their wealth on the bottling and distribution of Coca-Cola at the turn of the 20th century--and then gave it all away to charitable causes (see Gifts and Support). (BACK TO TOP)
Koplan
comes to Emory
Jeffery
Koplan has to travel a little farther down Clifton Road to come to
work these days, since leaving his position as director of the CDC to
become vice president for academic health affairs in Emory's Woodruff
Health Sciences Center.
This position is not his first foray into the private sector nor his first
affiliation with Emory. He is former president of the Prudential Center
for Health Care Research; he was also a clinical professor in the medical
school for 12 years and has had an appointment in the Rollins School of
Public Health since its founding in 1990.
Koplan looks forward to enhancing symbiosis among the schools and research
programs in the health sciences and brings special expertise to several
initiatives under way at Emory, including outcomes research, international
health, biotechnology, vaccines for AIDS and emerging infectious diseases,
and bioterrorism.
Koplan has an MD from Mt. Sinai and an MPH from Harvard. He completed
residencies in internal medicine at Montefiore Hospital in New York and
at Stanford and in preventive medicine at the CDC.
He joined the CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer in 1972,
working in smallpox eradication, including six months as an adviser to
the World Health Organization in Bangladesh. He was a medical epidemiologist
in infectious diseases in the California Department of Health and in the
Caribbean Epidemiology Centre in Trinidad. Returning to the CDC in 1978,
he served in various positions, including director of the Preventive Medicine
Residency Program, director of the Center for Health Promotion and Education,
and director and assistant surgeon general for the National Center for
Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. After serving the Prudential
Center from 1994 to 1998. he was named diretor of the CDC.
Koplan's daughter, Kate, is a member of the Emory's medical school class
of 2003. (BACK
TO TOP)
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