Celebrations were held in September for two new facilities on the St. Petersburg campus of the University of South Florida. Grand opening festivities were held for a new seven-story, 225,000-square-foot Research and Education Building. In the same month, groundbreaking ceremonies marked construction of the K9 Tactical Center/Florida’s Forensic Institute for Research, Security and Tactics (F.I.R.S.T.).
Expected to be finished by late 2019, the $4.3 million Forensics Institute will feature a laboratory for research and forensic casework, classrooms and a morgue.(Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com)
Groundbreaking of Forensics Institute:
The K9 Tactical Center/Florida’s Forensics Institute, a collaborative resource for universities, forensic scientists and law enforcement throughout Florida, will feature a laboratory for research and forensic casework, classrooms, a morgue and evidence storage.
Expected to be finished by late 2019, the $4.3 million facility will be located next to the Adam Kennedy Memorial Forensics Field, otherwise known as the “body farm,” on five acres adjacent to the Land O’Lakes Detention Center.
The focus will be on forensics, anthropology, geochemistry, legal medicine, forensic intelligence aviation reconstruction and cyber forensics as well as technology, including virtual autopsies with 3-D scanning and chemical isotope analysis.
Plans include a dedicated facility for tactical training of the Pasco County Sheriff’s K-9 unit, the Unified SWAT team and sheriff’s deputies. The campus will also house training facilities in cybersecurity and unmanned vehicles.
Academic partners include the University of South Florida, University of Florida, Florida Gulf Coast University and Pasco-Hernando State College.
The center will be the first in Florida, and only the seventh in the nation. The University of Tennessee in Knoxville started the first forensic training and research center in the 1970s. Other facilities are at Western Carolina University, Sam Houston State University, Texas State University in Carbondale, Southern Illinois University and Colorado Mesa University.
The Research and Education Building Opens:
The $95 million teaching facility at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, showcases medical innovation on multiple levels. The Center for Medical Simulation, for example, will allow medical professionals to hone their skills by practicing complex procedures on high-tech, simulation tools, including life-like mannequins that mirror real-life situations.
In addition to the mannequins, there are 15 rooms set up to resemble a hospital room, an operating room and intensive care unit as well as an ambulance and a bedroom in a private residence. An onsite shop has been established to repair and maintain the mannequins and other equipment.
Graduate medical education has transitioned to the new facility. The program includes a residency for physicians training to be pediatricians and post-residency fellowships for doctors seeking specialized training.
The facility also houses an expanded 40,000-square-foot research center divided into five institutes focused on heart disease, cancer and blood disorders, neonatal medicine, neurosciences, and fundamental biomedical research.
The University of South Florida Designated a Preeminent State Research University:
The statewide program, written into law in 2013, rewards high-achieving universities based on 12 metrics, including graduation rates, student retention, research expenditures and the number of patents awarded.
Along with the recognition, the university will receive $6.15 million, which university officials plan to use to attract nationally prominent faculty in areas that “offer the greatest reputational and scientific return on investment,” according to USF News. Those include cybersecurity, data science and water as well as heart health and medical engineering.
USF will now move forward with plans to open the new Morsani College of Medicine and Health Institute Facility in late 2019.
Upcoming Event at the University South Florida :
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