NMSU Biology Professor Timothy Wright led the effort to secure a $7.1 million infrastructure grant from the National Institutes of Health to add wild animal research facilities to the current planned biomedical building under construction on campus.
“We have a lot of people on campus who do work with disease emergence, such as how wild animals and insects may be vectoring diseases and causing new outbreaks in human populations,” Wright says. “This facility will really benefit that very active aspect of research on campus. It will include more animal holding space for animals being brought in from the wild. We can keep the wild animals separate from animals that are bred in the lab. It will have entomology space for insects, and there will be aviary space for birds and bats.”
The NIH grant provides funding for large construction projects of biomedical relevance. The NMSU grant will complement biomedical facilities funded by a previous General Obligation bond, which were scaled back due increases in construction costs.
The wild animal research expansion is expected to be completed in 2024.
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