Apr 30, 2014 09:47 AM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will invest $350 million in facilities for nanoscale research.

MIT.nano will be a 200,000-square-foot building, dedicated to state-of-the-art cleanroom, imaging and prototyping facilities supporting research with nanoscale materials and processes such as energy, health, life sciences, quantum sciences, electronics and manufacturing. The officials said that around 2,000 MIT researchers will use the building for the research.

Building 12, a campus facility will be demolished for the planned center. Construction will start in summer of 2015 and the building is scheduled to be completed by 2018.

"The capabilities it provides and the interdisciplinary community it inspires will keep MIT at the forefront of discovery and innovation, and give us the power to solve urgent global challenges," MIT President L. Rafael Reif said in a press release.

MIT.nano will have two connected floors of cleanroom laboratories that would house fabrication spaces and materials growth laboratories. The officials say this will greatly expand the capacity for research related to components that are measured in billionths of a meter.

"The tools of nanotechnology will play a critical part in how many engineering disciplines solve the problems of the 21st century, and MIT.nano will shape the Institute's role in these advances," says Ian A. Waitz, dean of the School of Engineering and the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

A floor dedicated for advanced imaging technologies with low vibration and minimal electromagnetic interference is also planned. The facility will be constructed near the signature dome of the campus.

"This building needs to be centrally located, because nanoscale research is now central to so many disciplines," said electrical engineering professor Vladimir Bulovic, faculty leader on the project and associate dean for innovation in the School of Engineering.

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