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UKE celebrates the new building HCTI

New building for cutting-edge immunological and infectious diseases research: UKE celebrates topping-out ceremony

 

 

Another milestone in the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf's (UKE) Future Plan 2050 has been reached: Today, the UKE Executive Board and UKE scientists celebrated the topping-out ceremony for the Campus Research II (CF II) and the Hamburg Center for Translational Immunology (HCTI) together with Science Senator Katharina Fegebank and construction participants. With around 150 laboratory units, the new building offers optimal conditions for further developing biomedical basic and clinical translational immunity, infection and inflammation research at the UKE. The building is scheduled for structural completion by the end of 2023.

"At the UKE, we will help shape the future of medicine. With the new research building, we are creating a place where scientists will soon be able to work in state-of-the-art surroundings to help people with autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases. With our investments in the UKE's Future Plan 2050, we are supporting the development of cutting-edge research in Hamburg together with the federal government and giving it another home. I thank all those involved for their commitment to this important building project," says Katharina Fegebank, Senator for Science, Research, Equality and Districts.

"Today is a very special moment for science and for translational medicine at the UKE: the shell for the pioneering research fields of immunity and inflammation research and the closely related infection research is in place. In the foreseeable future, scientists will be working here to transfer newly gained knowledge from biomedical basic and clinical translational research into medical care for our patients as quickly as possible. The researchers will now have the most modern, urgently needed working and laboratory space, which will contribute to the further development of a high-performance research campus at the UKE and show how modern science should be organised and how creative ideas for interdisciplinary and methodologically outstanding collaboration pave the way," says Prof. Dr. Blanche Schwappach-Pignataro, Dean of the Medical Faculty and member of the UKE Board of Directors.

Research for patients with infections, inflammations and immunological diseases

The building is divided into two wings: the northern wing will house the CF II, the southern wing the HCTI. The focus will be on research into infectious pathogens, the infectious diseases they cause and the role of the immune system, both in the defence against pathogens but also in chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

"The interdisciplinary cooperation of the working groups in the new buildings and the immediate proximity to the patients in the hospital will enable us to further develop medicine - not only for the treatment of infectious diseases, but also for the understanding of many other diseases in the development of which the immune system plays a role, for example in cancer or autoimmune diseases," explains Prof. Martin Aepfelbacher, Institute of Medical Microbiology, Virology and Hygiene, who is planning the visionary outline of the new research centres together with Prof. Dr. Ulf Panzer, III Medical Clinic and spokesperson of the HCTI.

v.l.n.rechts: Prof. Dr. Blanche Schwappach-PignataroDekanin der Medizinischen Fakultät und Mitglied des Vorstands des UKE, Prof. Dr. Martin AepfelbacherPlanungsleiter CF II, Katharina FegebankSenatorin der BWFGB, Prof. Dr. Martin AepfelbacherPlanungsleiter CF II, Feridun BircanGeschäftsführer KFE, Stefan Heller, Polier Firma Wolf

 
From left to right: Dean Prof. Dr. Blanche Schwappach-Pignataro, Speaker of HCTI Prof. Dr. Ulf Panzer, Senator Katharina Fegebank, Prof. Dr. Martin Aepfelbacher, General Manger KFE Feridun Bircan and Stefan Heller of company Wolff & Müller.

Communicative architecture promotes interdisciplinary cooperation

The approach of interdisciplinary cooperation is also reflected in the architecture of the new building. The six-storey building with a gross floor area of around 18,000 square metres is divided into two parallel building blocks with a connecting wing in the middle. Openly designed seminar and event areas on the ground floor as well as meeting rooms and common areas on the upper levels support the scientific exchange of employees. Around 120 office workplaces and 190 laboratory workplaces in Campus Research II and around 120 office workplaces and 170 laboratory workplaces in the HCTI are distributed over the basement, the ground floor and four upper floors. Above each building there is a staggered storey with a technical centre. The building structure and the future brick façade of the new building take up the formal language of Campus Research I and combine it into a harmonious building ensemble.