Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science (RFU) Executive Vice President for Research, Dr. Ronald Kaplan, recently spoke with iBIO News Brief contributor, Jed Weiner, to discuss the RFU Innovation and Research Park (IRP) currently under construction by The University Financing Foundation in North Chicago. The first of three planned facilities within the research park, this new 100,000 square foot building will house RFU disease-based research centers that bring together university faculty and industry partners into one collaborative environment. State-of-the-art research equipment will be provided as core amenities to the building including electron and confocal microscopy, live-cell imaging, in vivo testing, mass spectrometry, molecular quantification and medical simulation technologies, to name just a few.
“We are the only medical school in Lake County, the home of 122 life sciences companies and about 33,000 bioscience jobs. We want RFU to become the epicenter of academic-industry collaborations within a 250-mile radius of our campus – and our bold plans for the IRP will enable us to achieve that goal within the next decade. Improving human health requires translational science, so part of our mission is to help create startups. The IRP in general and in particular the incubator, which we are calling Helix 51, will foster interactions between researchers, entrepreneurs and industry partners with the commercialization expertise that leads to the improvement of human health.” – Dr. Ronald Kaplan