Research Excellence: Biosafety Level 3 Laboratory

Re: Research Excellence: Biosafety Level 3 Laboratory

To: All campus

Nov. 4, 2020

 

Note: Every other Wednesday, Chancellor Muñoz and other campus leaders will share updates on top campus initiatives with the campus community and valued external partners. This is the first such update.

 

To the UC Merced community,

 

Research and public service are pillars of the University of California mission. Our faculty, graduate students and undergraduates have built a reputation for research excellence that has grown even through this current pandemic.

 

Consider, as one example, Professor Ashlie Martini’s “mission to Mars” work in tribology — a small, passionate research group of faculty, students and alumni who produced new knowledge to help our world better understand our universe. The product of our research is even now speeding its way to another planet.

 

In this same spirit, UC Merced has built a Biosafety Level 3 laboratory as part of the final phase of the Merced 2020 Project. The research performed here will advance our understanding of infectious diseases, with a particular focus on Valley fever, a longtime scourge of those who work the land in California and the American Southwest. This significant work will do so much to improve the daily lives of so many in our region and boost the agriculture industry that is vital to our economic future — as well as to mark UC Merced as a global leader in public health research.

 

This is a future that requires further investment. Executive Vice Chancellor/Provost Gregg Camfield and I have designated $1 million of institutional funding to purchase some of the cutting-edge technology needed for the BLS-3. I do so with the expectation that our Philanthropy and Strategic Partnerships team will work with corporations, foundations and far-thinking individuals to join their vision to ours in fitting out the BSL-3, to incubate new ideas for combatting age-old diseases.

 

These are difficult times, but both the times and our core mission call on us to focus intensively on what UC Merced should be and will be. The work of the faculty and students in our BSL-3 will be an important part of this university’s future and will make us proud.

 

Thank you,

 

Juan Sánchez Muñoz, Ph.D.

Chancellor