Research investments and student housing highlight October Board of Trustees meeting

The University of Louisville continues to strengthen its status as a Carnegie Research 1 and premier metropolitan institution thanks to recent measures taken by its Board of Trustees.

Secure space at One Innovation Center

At its Oct. 28 meeting, the board approved a $1.5 million payment from the UofL Research Foundation to Parallax Advanced Research to build and operate a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), which will occupy 10,000 square feet of space in the university’s One Innovation Center building in downtown Louisville.

A SCIF is an accredited secure space built to U.S. Intelligence Community standards, where highly classified intelligence data can be stored, processed or discussed. According to Jon Klein, UofL’s executive vice president for research and innovation, SCIF access is a key element of the university’s strategic plan and enables UofL to participate in classified research and contracts, expands access to funding opportunities and supports education and workforce development in national security-related fields.

“The facility will be quite useful for our faculty who are doing high levels of defense-related research as well as for our local defense contractors, such as BAE Systems and Raytheon,” said Klein.

In addition to access to the SCIF and Parallax’s services as the SCIF’s operator, the research foundation will license the UofL name and logo to Parallax for branding purposes in exchange for a royalty payment. December 2027 is the SCIF’s targeted opening date.

HSC Medical Tower renovations

In July, the university announced a $70 million federal appropriation to fund a 70,000-square-foot Center for Bioscience, which will be located in the new Innovation Park adjacent to the J.B. Speed School of Engineering.

UofL’s investments in biosciences continue to gain momentum with the trustees’ approval of nearly $38 million in federal grants to renovate the Health Sciences Campus Medical Tower. Renovations will bring the building up to specifications to house a biosciences Precision Medicine Research Center. The center will focus on developing new molecular and computational tools for genomics (the large-scale study of the complete set of genetic material in a cell or organism), proteomics (large-scale study of the entire set of proteins produced by a cell, tissue or organism, examining structures, modifications and interactions) and informatics (interdisciplinary study, design and use of information technology to transform data into actionable knowledge) as well as integrating these data types to glean as much as possible from limited primary and/or patient samples. Services provided by the center will be available to the UofL research community as well as regional and national collaborators.

New student housing options

More students are calling UofL “home” as seen in the past three consecutive years of record enrollment. More students also want to live on campus. This growth, along with the upcoming demolition of Unitas Hall and The Clubhouse Apartments, has presented increased housing needs.

Starting earlier this year, a group comprising representatives from Student Housing, Finance & Administration and Planning, Design & Construction have been working with the Brailsford & Dunlavey real estate advisory firm to explore options and address the need for additional student housing.

Brailsford & Dunlavey representatives, along with Rick Graycarek, executive vice president for finance & administration/CFO, and Michael Mardis, dean of students and vice president for student affairs, provided an update to the Board of Trustees at the October meeting.

Currently under consideration is developing two pieces of property on Belknap Campus to provide up to 1,500 additional beds. One area is currently a parking lot on the corner of Fourth Street and Cardinal Boulevard adjacent to Kurz Hall. The other area is across from Cardinal Towne between Fourth Street and Third Street, on space currently occupied by parking spaces. Presenters emphasized that these are possible sites for new housing and that a formal proposal has not yet been submitted for approval.

Requests for proposals from potential developers are currently under review, with the goal of selecting a preferred developer by December 2026 with a goal of the new housing becoming available by August 2029.

UofL Foundation MOU

Trustees approved an amended Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the University of Louisville and the University of Louisville Foundation, Inc. The UofL Foundation is an independent 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation that receives, invests and manages charitable funds, endowments and real estate for the benefit of the university. Amendments to the 2021 MOU can be found in the areas of executive leadership reporting relationships, executive director oversight, fundraising responsibility, board composition, financial reporting, foundation authority, annual budgeting, funding requests, among others.