Site dedication occurs for new nuclear magnetic resonance facility

(COLLEGE STATION, TX) – Site dedication ceremonies for a new state-of-the-art nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) facility on the Texas A&M University campus occurred Friday, Jan. 23. The NMR facility supports highly specialized scientific studies by units of Texas A&M, Texas AgriLife Research and the Texas A&M Health Science Center.

Construction is already under way for the $15.4 million facility in the area just south of the Biochemistry and Biophysics Building, where the present NMR facilities are housed.

Dedicatory speakers included Texas A&M University System Board of Regents Chairman Bill Jones, Chancellor Michael D. McKinney, Texas A&M President Elsa Murano, Health Science Center President and Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs Nancy W. Dickey, and Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Interim Deputy Vice Chancellor and Associate Dean Bill Dugas. The ceremony was in the plaza by the Biochemistry and Biophysics Building and near the Joe Reynolds Building, which serves as headquarters for the HSC-College of Medicine.

The new NMR facility, which will consist of three floors and contain approximately 37,282 gross square feet, is scheduled for completion by mid-2010, officials note. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has become a core technology in basic and applied research in the molecular life sciences and a cornerstone of structural biology on campus, they add.