University of Louisville

The renovated space provides a centralized, modern vivarium to house rodent and aquatics species in support of a broad range of long-term research efforts, with a strong emphasis on clinical translational research. The new vivarium replaces and consolidates rodent housing rooms that were previously spread throughout 10 floors within two buildings on campus.

The renovated area triples current animal housing space and improves efficiency for investigators by providing both animal housing and procedural space in a single location.

The innovative facility design maximizes flexibility for the University’s ongoing needs and projected future growth by including multi-purpose rooms that can serve as animal housing or procedural space, with minimal fixed equipment. The new facility also includes specialized inhalation rooms and ABSL2 procedure space, which are not currently available.

The vivarium is strategically located to allow for numerous enclosed connections to surrounding research buildings, making it an ideal spot for a centralized vivarium and an academic research hub.

The renovation was made possible after a successful NIH grant application, led by University of Louisville and supported by the Omni/HERA design team.

HERA worked with vendors to meet the needs of the project. For the rodent housing cages, we reviewed the rack options and worked with the users to select a cage rack with the capacity and features to meet their needs. We worked with the aquatic tank vendor to provide the aquatic racks preferred by the users as well as a tank washer. Both the aquatic and rodent racks required different specialized reverse osmosis water and we coordinated with the design team for the needs of the water systems.