ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell University officially opened its new Atkinson Hall on April 9 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
The hall serves as a home for research across a range of areas including sustainability, cancer biology and immunology, nutrition, global health, and computational biology, according to a writeup in the online Cornell Chronicle.
“Atkinson Hall will allow Cornell to do what it does best — bring together faculty from across disciplines to achieve the next level of investigation and discovery,” Cornell Interim Vice Provost for Research Gary Koretzky said at the formal-opening event. “This will be transformative for the fields of immunology, cancer biology, molecular biology and genetics, computational biology, and biomedical engineering. I can only imagine what discoveries we are going to see as the science in this building develops.”
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The new research building, located at 350 Tower Road, is the first on campus that isn’t affiliated with a single college, Cornell said. Instead, it serves as a site for collaboration across disciplines. Atkinson Hall includes offices and labs for the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, the Master of Public Health program, and the Department of Computational Biology. It will also serve as the home for the Cornell Center for Cancer Immunology, which will research cancer biology, immunology, and the impact of nutrition on immune health and cancer development and treatment.
The facility was made possible through a $30 million gift from David R. Atkinson, a 1960 Cornell alumnus, and Patricia Atkinson.
Atkinson Hall includes a number of energy-saving features including rooftop solar panels, thermal regulation around the exterior, and a cascading air system designed to cut energy use. Lake Flato Architects, in collaboration with SWBR, designed the building.
Philanthropic gifts for offices and meeting spaces in Atkinson Hall were provided by Erica Chan (a 1991 Cornell graduate) and David Drinkwater (a 1994 graduate).
The Atkinsons have previously supported the university with gifts including a donation of more than $80 million that established the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.
“While Cornell Atkinson has far exceeded our expectations, perhaps the greatest benefit of having been involved with the center has been the opportunity to meet and get to know so many great Cornell faculty and employees,” David Atkinson said in Cornell Chronicle. “It is very gratifying to know that their collective work will be enhanced by the presence of Atkinson Hall.”
