University of Chicago

A renovation of the 2^nd floor of the Searle Building for recently-recruited, Nobel Prize winning biochemistry researcher Dr. Jack Szostak. The research lab suite encompasses 4,700 sf, with the remainder of the floor being designed for a future fit out that could include offices and storage areas.

The HERA team traveled to the PI’s Boston laboratory to walk through the existing lab and discuss equipment. We helped develop a comprehensive equipment list and assisted with equipment selection on contractor furnished items.

The new research suite allows the PI to continue his pioneering look at the biochemical origins of life. In 2009 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomers – the “end cap” on a strand of DNA that protects the genetic information – and the enzyme telomerase.

At The University of Chicago, Szostak leads the Origins of Life Initiative, a new interdisciplinary program that seeks to understand the earliest processes governing the origin of life on Earth and elsewhere in the universe.