Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point, VA | Higher Education
New three-story, 68,250 SF facility for all four academic departments at VIMS: Aquatic Health Sciences, Biological Sciences, Fisheries Science and Physical Sciences. The building houses wet/dry labs, collaborative and conference spaces, work rooms and faculty offices. The new labs reflect the core research areas in VIMS’ most recent strategic plan — ensuring ecosystem health, promoting resilient coastal systems and providing science for sustainable stewardship of natural resources. The facility allows VIMS researchers to continue to pursue research and research-funding opportunities at the local, state and national levels.
The design team prioritized flexibility, sustainability and durability. The spaces needed to be flexible enough to adapt to changes in function or equipment to support research changes as they happen. The research labs house a variety of high-tech equipment, including DNA analyzers, gas chromatographs, mass spectrometers, spectrophotometers, flow cytometer and an energy dispersive X-ray spectroscope with the imaging capabilities of a scanning electron microscope. Use of these instruments allows VIMS researchers to analyze contaminants known to cause adverse effects to marine organisms even at ultra-low concentrations.