Animal research plays a key role in the race to develop vaccines and understand the mysteries of the brain. Research with mice, rats and other animals has enabled scientists to make discoveries that move science forward. There are several reasons why the use of animals is critical for scientific research: For example, many animals are biologically very similar to humans and are susceptible to many of the same health problems — cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc. In fact, mice share more than 98 percent of their DNA with us.

The fifth floor of Paul Hall will be primarily used as the Animal Research Facility Core Lab, which will allow animal research to meaningfully expand. At least initially, much of the animal research conducted at Paul Hall will be conducted by Brain Institute scientists with their offices in Flower Hall and Paul Hall. Currently, these faculty members perform research in Stern Hall, which requires animal transport. It will be invaluable for them to be able to use this facility for their animal work because many behavioral experiments need animals to be proximal to where they live in order to control the experiments.

Much of the fifth floor will be the Animal Research Facility Suite, where animals will live and be treated before they can be used in experiments. This lab will be under the purview of the director of the Department of Comparative Medicine. That department will provide that the animals on the fifth floor are bred for specific experiments. The comparative medicine team includes experts who make sure that animals are treated in an ethically responsible way and with compassion and dignity. They also provide veterinary care for animals and provide technical support and training for researchers.

There are numerous naming opportunities within the larger Animal Research Facility Core Lab. For example, the Behavior Core Lab is the actual space where experiments will occur. There are also additional naming opportunities available on the floor. There are four offices plus the Behavioral Suite and Behavioral Support Labs, which are located within the main behavioral core lab and are considered core support facilities.

The equipment in this Animal Research Facility Core Lab will be new and state of the art, specially ordered by members of the Brain Institute team that will be conducting research. Researchers will be studying memory and aging, anxiety and mental health disorders. The space will use new techniques to image activity in the brain. Some of these experiments will help us understand Alzheimer’s and neurodegeneration, how the brain changes with aging and the mechanisms of post-traumatic stress disorder. For example, scientists will be able to record the activity of neurons as animals are completing a memory test to better understand how memories are formed and how memory changes over the lifespan.

One scientist who will conduct animal research on the fifth floor is Professor Jill Daniel, who is leading a five-year investigation on why the brain-protecting benefits of estrogen may not apply to all women, especially those with hypertension and Type 2 diabetes. Her work in the lab has focused on the impact of hormones on the brain and cognition across the lifespan.

Also, Tulane Professor Jeffrey Tasker will use the space to study the formation of fear memories in the emotional hub of the brain — the amygdala. His research looks into why some memories are seared in our brains more than others and could ultimately help develop treatments for anxiety disorders and PTSD.

The research areas in the Animal Research Facility Core Lab will be flexible to accommodate interdisciplinary work, as part of the School of Science and Engineering mission to build spaces that are useful to as many researchers as possible. On the fifth floor, researchers in different departments will be working side by side, sharing the space.

At Tulane, we know that animal research is critical to the advancement of medical knowledge, and for that reason Tulane is at the forefront. If you direct your generosity to animal research at the School of Science and Engineering, you would be supporting one of the most important ways for scientists to learn more about health concerns that affect both humans and animals, making the world a healthier place for everyone.

Data collection and analysis labs are controlled spaces adjacent to the main, open interdisciplinary labs. These spaces are crucial to creating synergy in the research process. Whether the research is to design novel engineering technology or a scientific process, it is not considered complete without the production of reports outlining the main results. These spaces will provide a place for researchers to step away from their experiments to capture their steps, review what they’ve learned and evaluate the challenges they are facing.

They will also provide space for people to meet and work as a team outside of the main lab, encouraging collaborative research between engineers and scientists. Data collection and analysis labs are also primary workstations for graduate students, providing a secure and robust environment to collect data from their research.

The Tulane Cleanroom located in Paul Hall will be a leading-edge micro/nanofabrication and characterization facility. Housing over $4 million in equipment and infrastructure, the Tulane Cleanroom will provide advanced processing and analysis of materials and devices at the micrometer and nanometer scale. Faculty will use this facility to work at the forefront of research in energy generation and storage, quantum materials, polymer science, drug development, biosensing and more.

The facility will also be a critical educational resource, supporting coursework and research for undergraduate and graduate students. As it exists presently in Stanley Thomas Hall, the Tulane Cleanroom is one of few micro/nanofabrication facilities in the Gulf South, and it is open to users from institutions and companies across the region. With its move to Paul Hall, we anticipate even more collaboration.

The Class 1000 Cleanroom may include the following equipment:

• Suss MJB4 mask aligner and related photolithography tools
• AJA ion miller
• Bruker D8 Discover X-ray diffraction (XRD) system
• Angstrom Engineering electron-beam evaporator
• Multimode atomic force microscope (AFM)
• Olympus optical microscope with camera and heated stage
• KLA Tencor stylus profilometer
• Zegage optical profilometer
• J.A. Woollam spectroscopic ellipsometer
• Sentrotech vacuum furnace
• Harrick oxygen plasma cleaner
• Heatpulse 610 rapid thermal annealer (RTA)
• Trion inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etcher (ICP-RIE), with DRIE and PECVD capabilities
• Various chemical fume hoods, laminar flow hoods and a glove box

Modern engineering and science are intensely social activities and function best when supported by architecture that facilitates flexibility and collaboration. Paul Hall’s interdisciplinary “open” laboratories will be innovative and forward-thinking, supporting team-based work. The interdisciplinary lab concept is significantly different from that of the “closed” lab of the past, which was based on accommodating the individual principal investigator. In these interdisciplinary labs, engineers and scientists will share not only the space itself, but also equipment, bench space and support staff. The interdisciplinary lab format facilitates communication between engineers and scientists, making the lab more easily adaptable for future needs.

The lab will feature:

• Flexible engineering systems and core facilities
• The ability to create team-based “research centers” based on themes
• The space necessary for research team members to operate properly near each other
• Clearly defined circulation patterns
• Glass walls bringing daylight into the lab, allowing external visual access to the engineering and science taking place

Paul Hall will feature office bays throughout the building that will provide faculty and staff with private space. Individual faculty and staff offices will be located within these office suites. We designed Paul Hall with these office bays to foster impromptu collaboration, encouraging cooperation among faculty members and students.

These bays would be a hub of activity on a daily basis, providing our staff and faculty members with a comfortable environment for reviewing research, preparing for classes, working on publications, assessing student work and meeting with students and colleagues.

Top-of-the-line research equipment is crucial if Tulane aspires to stay at the forefront of groundbreaking research in science and engineering. Six of Paul Hall’s lab support areas are reserved as equipment corridors. These spaces are available on floors two, three and four, and the type of equipment in each area will vary based on the theme of the research being conducted on that floor. These support labs are adjacent to the open laboratories and other support labs, showing how important they are to the research being conducted within. These large rooms contain laboratory equipment that is integral to the research process but that does not have to be tended continuously. The equipment will vary to accommodate the interdisciplinary research conducted at Paul Hall, but some examples of the type of equipment that could be stored in these labs are freezers, refrigerators, centrifuges, incubators and transilluminators.

Support labs within Paul Hall will be located adjacent to the main interdisciplinary labs and are considered core support facilities. Support labs are an integral part of modern research, providing specialized instruments and services managed by scientists and engineers with the technical expertise and experience to help others who need these capabilities. These labs are designed to be flexible and capable of accommodating ongoing change within the main interdisciplinary labs. The very design of the support lab’s flexible structure is to reinforce an ever-shifting laboratory environment when new workflows and advanced technologies are needed.

As new science and engineering continue to develop apace, the laboratory working environment must continue to evolve as well; part of this evolution requires a flexible response from support labs. Some of these support labs will be more along the lines of traditional closed laboratories, which are needed for specific kinds of research or for specialized equipment such as nuclear magnetic resonance equipment, electron microscopes, tissue culture labs and darkrooms, which need to be housed in separate, dedicated, quiet spaces. These support labs directly access the larger, shared open laboratory. When a researcher requires a separate space, an individual closed laboratory could be used; when it is beneficial to work as a team, the main open laboratory is used.

At Tulane, scientists and engineers are working together to make amazing discoveries. One of our strategic goals in building Paul Hall is to bring resources together and create core facilities that will allow people to work more efficiently. Support labs assist the scientists and engineers who will conduct the research that could save lives. As an example, tissue culture is important for all researchers in the Brain Institute and developmental biology, so by bringing them all together in one support lab, we can make their work more efficient. The microscopy core will contain imaging technology and other equipment that researchers use in developmental biology and brain research. Support labs are available at different price points, at different sizes, throughout the building.

On the second floor, in addition to six other support labs, the Brain Institute staff has reserved two support labs to house electrophysiology rigs. In electrophysiology experiments, which are common to brain research, researchers measure the conductivity of neurons. This trailblazing research could help us unravel the mysteries of the brain. For example, one faculty member is currently studying the brain using patch clamp electrophysiology in his attempt to learn why frightening events stay with people when other kinds of memories become harder to remember over time. This research could have implications that will help treat anxiety disorders and PTSD.

On the third floor — which will house researchers in interdisciplinary materials — the lab support space houses equipment that will be used by many different disciplines. These labs will be configured differently because lab support will not be assigned to one person, but could contain tools like atomic force microscopes, oscilloscopes and electronic hardware that multiple groups can use. In these multi-use labs, researchers from five or six disciplines could work together using the equipment.

One researcher who is currently set to have a research lab on the third floor is Stryder Meadows, a cell and molecular biology professor, who has received millions of dollars in federal funding to study how arteriovenous malformations (which are defects in arteries, veins and capillaries) form Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia, a genetic disorder that affects about 1 in 5,000 people. Meadows hopes to help formulate drugs to help patients of the rare disease, which can cause hemorrhaging and life-threatening complications.

Architectural gestures throughout Paul Hall, including the atrium, were designed to elevate and embody the spirit of engineering.

We expect this centerpiece of the building will be the most striking architectural feature on this part of campus. The atrium will be a high-traffic, high-visibility space on the bustling first floor. Designed around notions of transparency and unification, the open atrium on Paul Hall’s first floor will serve as the social heart of the building – offering a range of spaces for students to study, relax and congregate. As the welcome space and main circulation area for the building, this will be a natural gathering place for students and faculty alike.

The atrium will face the main thoroughfare of the science and engineering district, bringing increased visibility and welcomeness to Paul Hall. It will serve as a venue for speaking engagements and meetings while also providing generous space for student and faculty meetings and study sessions. With your generosity, it would be an inviting area for all who enter Paul Hall.

The auditorium, located on Paul Hall’s first floor, will be one of the most impressive spaces in the new building — and on the uptown campus.

The auditorium in Paul Hall will be one of the most sought-after locations on Tulane’s campus. This space will feature state-of-the-art flexibility in not only its furniture, with chairs that are able to move, but also its technology. These capabilities will allow it to be used for a variety of purposes, including event space, an interdisciplinary classroom, programming that serves the community, small conferences and more. This new auditorium will be critically important because there is currently no large gathering space in any SSE building at Tulane.

As an event space, the auditorium can accommodate 200+ guests. From a state-of-the-art classroom to small conferences and receptions, board meeting, trainings, community events and more, this space will become notable around campus.

When used as a classroom, this high-visibility space will be equipped with leading-edge technology. Its flexible seating will allow faculty to arrange students in a myriad of configurations to best suit learning objectives for the day. This space will help Tulane remain on the forefront of science and engineering education nationwide, and it will be a vital center of activity and learning within the School of Science and Engineering.

The auditorium will also make a huge impact on the Center for K-12 STEM at Tulane. Boys at Tulane in STEM (BATS), Girls in STEM at Tulane (GIST) and the Summer Scholars Program (TSSP) will be able to use this space for their programming. Currently, K-12 STEM must shuffle students all over campus for various activities. This space will give them one centralized space for all programming. This is not only easier, but also safer for these young visitors to campus.

A key focus of Paul Hall will be encouraging scientists and engineers to work together across disciplines. In all of the building’s conference rooms, faculty principal investigators (PIs) will meet with graduate PIs, other research staff or students to discuss projects based on the research theme of that floor.

Conference rooms will utilize the “open-room” concept, meaning that they will be easily reconfigured to the needs of those using the space for research partnerships. In addition, the rooms will be private so that PIs and other research fellows can feel comfortable discussing research and intellectual property. Your generosity would help provide that this space would be engaging and welcoming, fostering collaboration and discovery.

Social interaction areas like Paul Hall’s commons are central to the mission of this new building. They will allow scientists and engineers to bump into each other, which will increase impromptu conversations and partnerships. The commons in Paul Hall will be ideal spaces for SSE faculty, staff and students to prepare food and share meals, outside of the labs. These spaces will promote serendipitous encounters between scholars, sparking conversation and prompting the exchange of ideas.

Currently, no SSE buildings have dining spaces, so faculty and staff often must leave the building to dine, or they eat in their offices with the doors shut. Each of Paul Hall’s four commons will be a conduit to encourage collaboration. With one located on each of the top four floors, these commons will be locations where Tulanians can relax, recharge and socialize with each other while they are away from their desk, the lab or the classroom.

These commons will be popular and easily reconfigurable for different situations; the tables and chairs will be movable to meet a variety of needs as they arise, whether functioning as a spot for lunch, as a meeting room or to host an impromptu celebration to commemorate a discovery or achievement.

A critical consideration in designing Paul Hall was establishing places where people can congregate outside their labs to talk with one another. Huddle spaces will be located within the data collection and analysis labs and will be places where promising young minds can meet and exchange ideas.

Student huddle spaces will be a distinct feature of Paul Hall and will foster collaboration and innovation. The fluid, rearrangeable nature of a huddle space will foster a more dynamic environment than a typical meeting room. Intended to promote informal collaboration between faculty and students alike, these spaces will promote organic conversation and help cultivate invaluable connections and relationships.

These informal and comfortable huddle spaces will also foster partnerships among principal investigators and students across disciplines, enabling them to converge to discuss findings for greater research and problem-solving opportunities.

Informal learning areas meet different needs in promoting collaboration and creating mentoring opportunities between students and faculty.

One of the aspects that makes Paul Hall so groundbreaking is that each floor will be arranged by research theme. Your generosity would provide an inviting space to help scientists and engineers be inspired to work together around these themes, unbound by discipline. Each of the building’s faculty/staff offices will furnish space for principal investigators or graduate students and can also serve as satellite office space to draw investigators from other parts of campus. Each office will give Tulanians a comfortable room for day-to-day operations, including meetings with students and colleagues.

Office space will assist principal investigators who conduct life-changing research. A critical consideration in designing Paul Hall is establishing places – commons areas, conference rooms and offices – where people can congregate outside their labs to talk with one another. These offices will be places where great minds can meet and exchange ideas.

Floor 1: The bustling first floor of Paul Hall will be a highly visible and well-trafficked space, used not only by science and engineering students but by everyone on Tulane’s campus. The first floor will serve as the social heart of the building – offering a range of spaces for students to study, relax and congregate. As the welcome space and main circulation floor for the building, this will be a natural gathering place for students and faculty alike. This is the floor where light will truly shine on the scientific process, because it will be the location of some of the marquee spaces in the building, such as the auditorium, atrium, research gallery and eventually the cleanroom. If you decide to name the first floor of Paul Hall, your name would be associated with some of the most important spaces in science and engineering at Tulane.

Floor 3: The third floor will house researchers in interdisciplinary research materials and engineering. The labs, lab support spaces and offices on this floor will be used by scientists and engineers hailing from many different fields as they collaborate to make discoveries. In this space, like few areas on campus, the promise of true interdisciplinary research will be realized. Your gift to name the third floor of Paul Hall would be a meaningful way to show your support for interdisciplinary research.

Floor 4: The fourth floor will feature dedicated “swing space,” or unassigned interdisciplinary lab space that can temporarily house new hires, researchers displaced by renovations, scientists working on short-term projects or academics collaborating with a permanent resident of Paul Hall. Swing space such as this is often elusive for research labs, sometimes requiring administrators to scramble to find alternatives or leaving researchers without this valuable opportunity. The swing space will be generically designed, to appeal to an interdisciplinary range of academics. If you name the fourth floor of Paul Hall, your gift would support a unique space that will fill a real need at the School of Science and Engineering.

Floor 5: The fifth floor will be primarily used as the Animal Research Facility Core Lab, which will allow animal research to meaningfully expand. At least initially, much of the animal research conducted at Paul Hall will be conducted by Brain Institute scientists with their offices in Flower Hall and Paul Hall. Much of the fifth floor will be the Animal Research Facility Suite, where animals will live and be treated before they can be used in experiments. If you choose to name the fifth floor of Paul Hall, you would be supporting one of the most important ways for scientists to learn more about health concerns that affect both humans and animals, making the world a healthier place for everyone.

When completed, Steven and Jann Paul Hall will provide an outstanding venue for faculty and students to engage in research, learn, socialize, study and exchange ideas. A gift to Paul Hall would help bring us one step closer to breaking ground on this transformative project. Your gift would support a wide range of building elements, from equipment in research labs to faculty/staff offices and more. By helping to fund these dynamic areas, your support would assist the School of Science and Engineering’s continued role in maintaining Tulane’s membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU) – a select group of the 65 leading research universities in the United States and Canada with “preeminent programs of graduate and professional education and scholarly research.” This membership helps Tulane remain a cutting-edge Tier 1 research university and would allow us to continue addressing our most pressing needs.

During the extensive planning that went into designing Paul Hall, the leaders of science and engineering at Tulane have been committed to creating an inclusive environment, one that is welcoming to everyone. The mother’s room at Paul Hall will be an important step in providing an inclusive atmosphere.

Located on Paul Hall’s second floor, the mother’s room will provide a private, secure and comfortable place for new mothers. For mothers who breastfeed, regular pumping is necessary if they hope to continue to produce enough milk when they are away from their child. Too often, breastfeeding mothers are relegated to pumping in their offices or unsanitary places like bathrooms. Having a mother’s room inside the same building where mothers work is extremely important because research has shown that if mothers are not provided a convenient space, they might forgo breastfeeding once back at work or even push back their return-to-work start date. Too many people quit breastfeeding, despite the benefits to both mother and child, because they don’t have a comfortable, convenient space to pump.

Women are too often marginalized in the fields of science and engineering. Preliminary evidence by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published in 2021 found COVID-19 negatively affected women in science and engineering fields in academia, and the complications in work-life boundaries were particularly salient for women who are parents or caregivers. If we are to put the full weight of society into solving the world’s biggest problems, we must give everyone a seat at the table.

Rain gardens are vibrant patches of greenery, but they are so much more than aesthetically alluring. The rain garden at Paul Hall will be an appealing way to disguise an essential feature of the building — rainwater storage.

Too often, science and engineering students and professors have to walk into school or work with sopping feet because of puddles along campus walkways. Having a place to store rainwater is a necessity for New Orleans buildings, and Tulane is committed to playing its part in keeping water away from transit areas. Rain gardens can prevent flooding and puddling, beautify an area and filter pollutants from rainwater. You could choose to name either of the two rain gardens at Paul Hall: one on each side of the building.

Though the differences are difficult for the naked eye to spot, rain gardens are different from traditional gardens because they are designed to hold and filter rainwater. Typically, the top layer of soil is removed and replaced with a substance, such as compost or sand, that increases water infiltration. Every time it rains, water runs off impermeable surfaces, such as roofs or driveways, collecting pollutants along the way. The top layer of the rain garden soaks in the rainwater runoff and is effective in removing the majority of nutrients and sediments. This environmentally friendly landscaping captures rainwater instead of diverting it to storm drains. This means that these pollutants will be much less likely to end up in the New Orleans water supply.

Compared to a conventional lawn, experts say that rain gardens allow for 30 percent more water to soak into the ground. The rain garden will only hold water during and shortly following a rainfall; most of the time, it will be dry.

The plants in a rain garden are chosen because they are hardy and tolerant of temporary ponding rainwater, with deep roots that can survive the stress of heavy rainfalls and the nitrogen in rainwater. It is said that these plants are magicians.

To fully understand the significance of the research gallery, we must first highlight its location – the atrium of Paul Hall. The open atrium on Paul Hall’s first floor will be a welcoming entryway to the building. We expect this centerpiece of the building will be the most striking architectural feature on this part of campus. The atrium will be a high-traffic, high-visibility space on the bustling first floor. It will be an inviting area for all who enter Paul Hall while also acting as a flexible space to allow for student-faculty integration and innovative learning. As the welcome space and main circulation area for the building, this will be a natural gathering place for our students.

The atrium will face the main thoroughfare of the science and engineering district, bringing increased visibility and welcomeness to Paul Hall. It will serve as a venue for speaking engagements and meetings while also providing generous space for student and faculty meetings and study sessions. It will have a commanding yet inviting presence.

An integral part of the atrium will be the research gallery. The research gallery will be a prime space to showcase the past, present and future of the School of Science and Engineering (SSE) – such as senior engineering capstone projects (the culmination of an engineering student’s learning), the pioneering innovations of Tulane’s renowned faculty members or historical memorabilia from days gone by. Currently, such science and engineering research projects are often displayed in the Lavin-Bernick Center because there is no designated SSE gallery space. It will be a remarkable achievement to have an SSE-specific display gallery for the first time in Tulane’s history. This gallery space will provide significant exposure for these students and faculty because the area will be so heavily trafficked.

Famed biographer and Tulane professor Walter Isaacson discovered something very interesting when he was writing his bestseller, The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. Isaacson found that innovation doesn’t happen in silos. “Everybody I’ve written about seems to cross disciplines in order to have their creativity nourished,” said Isaacson. “Innovation occurs when you’re able to connect things.”

The importance of connection, of collaborative relationships between scientists and engineers from a variety of disciplines, will be a cornerstone of Paul Hall. Nowhere is that more evident than in the research gateways that connect Paul Hall with Flower Hall at the second, third and fourth floors. From a purely practical standpoint, the connectors will mean that researchers don’t have to stop what they’re doing and go outside if they need to see someone in a neighboring building. That ease of flow will make networking more likely. The gateways will also permit samples to stay inside instead of being carried outdoors where they could face damaging humidity. At a more philosophical level, the research gateways will signify the emphasis that the School of Science and Engineering places on interdisciplinary scholarship.

The three research gateways will connect researchers who are conducting similar research, but also allow interdisciplinary scholars to work together. The research gateway on the second floor will connect researchers in the Brain Institute in Paul Hall to the Brain Institute in Flower Hall. Already growing in size and stature, this new space will allow the Brain Institute to continue to develop and flourish. The research gateway on the third floor will link materials science and engineering at Paul Hall with materials researchers in Flower Hall and Building 12. The research gateway on the fourth floor will link interdisciplinary scientists and engineers from a variety of fields such as developmental biology, fostering collaborative teamwork.

Paul Hall is on track to become the centerpiece for science and engineering on Tulane’s uptown campus. We envision the Research Terrace, to be located between Paul Hall and Flower Hall, will become a popular spot among scientists and engineers. The Research Terrace will feature furniture to allow people to gather, converse and relax. This space will allow people to travel between Flower Hall and Paul Hall, but it promises to be much more than a walkway. Outdoor amenities are at a premium on Tulane’s campus, and we are committed to building an attractive location for scientists and engineers to convene. The terrace will be partly covered by the research gateways above, which will make this area even more unique and appealing, especially during rainy days.

Numerous studies have shown that spending time outdoors is healthy. Students could get together for lunch, to take a break from studying or to discuss the next big idea.

The Innovation Gateway will be an integral part of our vision for Tulane’s campus. This welcoming outdoor space will be a highly visible hub of student activity, located next to one of the busiest pedestrian walkways on campus. This courtyard will be adjacent to some of Tulane’s most defining assets: The Scot Ackerman MakerSpace, the new Steven and Jann Paul Hall for Science and Engineering and Stanley Thomas Hall.

The new courtyard will be located alongside the main thoroughfare of the academic quad. On any given day, thousands of Tulanians traverse this thoroughfare to get to class, grab a bite to eat or attend office hours. As Dean Kimberly Foster likes to say, Paul Hall will “put science and engineering on display” and be the “living room” of the School of Science and Engineering.

The Innovation Gateway will be a vibrant and beautiful gathering space in the heart of campus. In addition to offering a location for interaction, camaraderie and fellowship, the space will be a warm and attractive environment where students can gather, share a moment between classes and even collaborate on the next big discovery.