Today: Celebrate the new Yale Science Building

October 28, 2019

The dramatic transformation of Science Hill takes center stage at a campus celebration on Tuesday, Oct. 29.

The new Yale Science Building (YSB), 225 Prospect St., is set for a grand opening ceremony at 4 p.m. in the building’s nearly 500-seat O.C. Marsh Lecture Hall. The event, featuring remarks from President Peter Salovey and other university officials, is open to the Yale community and will be followed by a reception in the new, glass-enclosed pavilion located behind YSB.

The YSB opening is a major step in the forward march of Yale’s ambitious scientific research enterprise. Seven stories tall, it contains 280,300 square feet of research-driven space devoted to the exploration of biology and related disciplines — with a cryo-electron microscopy suite, a rooftop greenhouse, an insectary, a terrace overlooking Whitney Avenue, and specialized labs and equipment rooms that can be adapted for individual experiments.

Located in the footprint of the former J.W. Gibbs Laboratory, the new building will facilitate collaborative, cross-disciplinary research, with design elements that naturally foster interaction among faculty and students as they move through the building. YSB is home for an estimated 550 occupants, including members of the department of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, as well as part of the department of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, the Quantitative Biology Institute, and certain physics labs.

Construction of YSB began in 2017. Stantec, located in Hamden, Connecticut, designed the high-tech interiors and structural features of the new building. New Haven’s Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects designed the outer shell and public spaces. Scientists began moving into their new labs in August.

The building is filled with light, the labs are wonderful, and the common spaces are bringing people together,” said Anna Marie Pyle, Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, and chair of the YSB building committee. “The terrace has already become an unexpected joy for us. It’s almost like we have our own yard.”

People attending the grand opening event should use the main, O.C. Marsh Lecture Hall entrance at the building’s southeast corner, across from Kline Geology Lab.