Laboratory opens new training center

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has opened a new scientific training center named for the late Alfred Hershey, one of its Nobel Prize-winning scientists.

The newly completed 18,000-square-feet Alfred D. Hersey Building was built using a $15 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

The new structure replaced the original Hershey building, which was opened in 1979. A rededication ceremony was held on the campus on June 8.

“The new teaching facility will allow CSHL to strengthen its portfolio of technical courses, enabling us to maintain our lead in training the next generation of biomedical researchers in cutting-edge technologies and methods,” Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory president Bruce Stillman said in a statement.

The Hersey building will host the lab’s Meetings & Courses Program, which annually attracts about 10,000 scientists from around the world to the North Shore campus to learn the latest laboratory methods and techniques, laboratory officials said.

The new building features a Flow Cytometry Laboratory, where cells are sorted by laser technologies, a Microscopy Facility, which provides an array of microscope imaging services such as fluorescence, super-resolution and electron microscopy, as well as 3-D rendering and image analysis.

Hershey, who died in 1997, is best remembered for performing experiments in the early 1950s that convinced many skeptics that DNA — and not protein — was the carrier of genetic information. His most famous experiment, performed with Martha Chase in 1952, used a household blender to separate DNA from protein.

The new training center was designed by James Childress of Centerbrook Architects and Planners.