By SUSAN JONES
The Board of Trustees, along with its Property and Facilities committee, approved three projects this week, including two that will bring the new Fifth & Halket building to almost full capacity.
The largest of the projects will involve the top two floors of the 10-story building and cost an estimated $35 million. It will bring together the Department of Computational and Systems Biology, which are now housed in separate spaces in Oakland, and provide swing space for the School of Medicine to allow relocation of active research during renovations in existing aged facilities.
Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for health sciences, said that the department is a very hybrid program that requires dry labs for people who work on computers and computational biology, big data and AI, “and then there's the other half, working on DNA, RNA and cells, and have very specific wet lab needs.”
“This is also one of the leading programs in the country,” he said, “and actually is one of the few computational biology graduate programs that has a joint graduate program with Carnegie Mellon.”
The department also was able to recruit one of the best leaders in this space as chair, Shekhar said. Fritz Roth came to Pitt from the University of Toronto last year.
Because this project is over $25 million, it needed to be approved by the full Board of Trustees, which gave its OK on Dec. 5. Shekhar said that moving Computational and Systems Biology will free up space for the Department of Bioinformatics, which is now in leased space in Shadyside, to move onto campus.
Floors three to eight of the Fifth & Halket building will house the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, which is now scattered across several Pitt-owned and leased spaces. Construction is targeted for completion in December 2025, with SHRS becoming the first building occupants.
The building also will have an open lobby and retail space on the first floor and ground-level parking. See building progress in action with the Fifth and Halket project webcam.
Other projects
Projects under $25 million can be approved by the Property and Facilities committee without full board approval. They voted Dec. 4 on two of those projects.
Pitt EDGE: The Center for Excellence in Digital Education will occupy the second floor of Fifth & Halket. The new space will be fit-out to include simulation rooms for training and assessment on interpersonal and practical skills; a high-fidelity recording studio for online learning; and large classrooms and laboratories for hybrid learning across various fields.
Pitt EDGE will focus on planning, development and implementation of online and hybrid education programming across the University’s 16 schools.
Tony Delitto, dean of SHRS and head of Pitt EDGE, said the hybrid programs that SHRS has now, particularly in the doctor of physical therapy program, require students to visit campus for short immersion periods.
At first, these classes were held at the convention center downtown, which was very inconvenient, he said. Now, they use the old theater at SouthSide Works, which has been renovated to meet the program’s needs.
“When we transfer this whole process to Pitt EDGE, and think about what we want to do across not just the health sciences, but also what we'd like to do in offering more hybrid programs, there's there's clearly going to be a need for immersions,” Delitto said. “We think that bringing people to Pittsburgh and having them have that experience in the institution, is always a positive. And having something on campus is even a greater plus. So we have designed this space to accommodate these kinds of hybrid experiences.”
This project was a approved at a cost not to exceed $16 million.
WISER Institute: Phases 2 and 3 of consolidating facilities for the Winter Institute for Simulation, Education and Research (WISER) into Scaife Hall was approved for $13.75 million.
The project will expand the institute into the east side of Scaife Hall’s third floor, making the facility more readily available to students at the Schools of Medicine and Nursing, as well as practicing professionals in adjacent UPMC facilities.
Shekhar said the institute trains roughly 12,000 learners every year and has over 3,000 courses in this facility, and it also trains people across the globe at other academic medical centers in using simulation and ICU and surgical suites.
“There’s a single building between Forbes and Fifth avenues that housed a lot of the main functions,” he said. “But because of that, we had 6,000 health sciences students that were competing with 20,000 UPMC nurses and various other people that were getting trained here all the time. We needed to both expand but also bring it closer to the into the heart of the Oakland campus, so we can train medical students and nursing students and PT students and others in our own facility.”
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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