Long Island University breaks ground on College of Science building in Brookville
Kimberly R. Cline, president of Long Island University, center, breaks ground on a new building to house the College of Science at the LIU Post campus in Brookville. Credit: Newsday / Howard Schnapp
University leaders, researchers and state officials broke ground Thursday on what they tout will become Long Island University’s groundbreaking facility for scientific advancement.
Ceremonial shovels pierced the dirt just outside a dilapidated former campus bookstore on the LIU Post campus in Brookville on Thursday afternoon after a crowd of LIU faculty listened to the plans for the forthcoming $30 million College of Science building.
When the 40,000-square-foot facility opens in 2027, students and research professors from various fields will come together to further the university’s research into vaccines, cancer treatments and even medical applications of artificial intelligence, said Mohammed Cherkaoui, the university’s vice president of research.
The French science and technology company Dassault Systèmes selected LIU’s future facility to house its “center of excellence,” where “laboratories, collaborative spaces and research will fuel interdisciplinary breakthroughs, such as developing digital organs that will lead to saving lives,” university President Kimberly Cline said Thursday.
Currently, the university is conducting research into AI in medicine and “digital twins” of human organs throughout multiple facilities on- and off-campus, Cherkaoui told Newsday after the groundbreaking. These three-dimensional digital replicas of patients’ organs collected through MRI imaging and other existing medical technology allow doctors to “design a surgery” in advance “to avoid any risks,” Cherkaoui said. This technology will also allow researchers to test the potential toxicity of drugs on the human liver of “virtual patients,” thus reducing the need for testing on lab mice, he added.
“Now we can get all the beautiful minds working together on this project,” Cherkaoui said of bringing different disciplines under one new roof. “And then we can ramp up.”
The New York State aid agency Empire State Development is covering a third — $10 million — of the construction costs for the project. The state hopes the new facility will etch LIU into Long Island’s Mount Rushmore of research institutions that includes Brookhaven National Lab, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research and Stony Brook University. Kevin Law, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s appointee as the Empire State Development board chairman, described these as “great institutions,” before telling gathered LIU faculty their university needs to be included “in the mix because you’re really making it a research institution.”
“The reason the governor and ESD continue to invest in Long Island is because of the amazing talent here,” Law said. “We have an amazing workforce and we have some of the brightest students in both our K through 12 and at all of our colleges and universities. We are really making this research corridor unfold before our eyes.”
