Graduate student Vaishali Satpute uses a state-of-the-art microscope to examine cell layers on the hippocampus (left screen) and an individual neuron.

The Skaggs School of Pharmacy has been ranked in the top 10 since 2003 for earning grants and contracts from the National Institutes of Health. The school was unranked in 1990 but has since seen a meteoric rise in NIH research funding. It was ranked No. 7 overall in 2009.

The school, part of UM’s College of Health Professions and Biomedical Sciences, could not have maintained its stellar national ranking without the new Biomedical Research Facility and Science Learning Complex. The complex is the latest addition to the college’s Skaggs Building, which now includes a host of labs within its 150,000 square feet.

“Usable space is a tool, just like equipment,” says Dean Dave Forbes. “Without it you can’t do the kinds of work we do or attract the kind of resources we have. With this addition we have compared ourselves to heavy hitters like the University of Wisconsin.”

The complex includes a 135-seat tiered classroom on the first floor, as well as the spectrUM Discovery Area, an interactive science center for children. Forbes says the top three floors are special, because they are each basically one giant lab. Investigators work together in teams with shared workspaces and equipment.

“It’s all interconnected, and it encourages interdisciplinary work,” he says. “You come here weekends, nights and holidays, and people are working.”

The structure houses two of UM’s top grant earners: the Center for Environmental Health Sciences and the Center for Structural and Functional Neuroscience.

Forbes says UM’s biomedical research excellence would not have been possible without L.S. Skaggs, a former drugstore manager from Great Falls, whose foundation has now donated more than $11 million to campus.

“He transformed our operation,” Forbes says. “We would not be here without him. Now, for researchers who need a place to do science, this is the place.”

Project at a Glance:

Cost: $14.5 Million
Start Date: June 2005
Completion: July 2007
Gross Square Footage: 67,500
Funding: 50% UM, 30% Private, 20% Grants
Unique Feature: Interdisciplinary Labs