State Releases Funding For MBL’s Loeb Laboratory

The state acted quickly to release the $10 million it promised the Marine Biological Laboratory for capital improvements to the Loeb Laboratory.
On Monday Massachusetts Governor Deval L. Patrick and Senate President Therese M. Murray (D-Plymouth) were in Woods Hole to announce the state’s financial commitment to the project.
A day later, the board of directors for the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center voted unanimously to release those funds to the MBL. The life sciences center is the agency responsible for overseeing the $1 billion in state money created by the Massachusetts Life Sciences Act that Governor Patrick signed into law this past June.
Half of that $1 billion will be dedicated to capital projects such as the MBL’s, which is expected to begin in March and will include a wholesale renovation of the three-story Loeb Laboratory, built in 1970. The building houses the MBL’s intensive full-immersion graduate and post-doctoral level laboratory projects.
MBL Director Gary G. Borisy said state funds helped the scientific institution leverage a $15 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to cover the entire cost of the $25 million project.
The renovation, he said, will allow the MBL to remain a world leader in the sciences by attracting top students, researchers, and faculty and providing them with an adequate setting to conduct their work.