The University of Rochester will get $3 million in state support of its Robert B. Goergen Hall for Biomedical Engineering and Optics, state and university officials announced yesterday.

"Rochester remains one of the top communities for higher learning and this new biomedical engineering and optics facility will enhance our ability to attract quality professors and new students, not only from our own region, but from all over the world to locate here to teach and learn," said State Senator Joseph Robach. "This grant will help bring new jobs to our community and further the education of our young people in the field of biotechnology."

Goergen Hall will house research facilities, undergraduate and graduate teaching labs, demonstration halls, a 155-seat lecture hall and the new Center for Institute Ventures, designed to commercialize university research. The completed 101,000-sq-ft building will cost $37.7 million, of which $32 million has been raised through a combination of alumni donations, awards from the Whitaker Foundation and New York State and federal funds. Construction began in the spring of 2005 and is scheduled to be completed next spring. It is expected to employ between 400 and 700 people.

Officials said the university's biomedical engineering program ranks among the 15 leading programs in the nation, and the Institute of Optics has graduated more than half of the country's optics specialists.

"With the creation of the Robert B. Goergen Hall of Biomedical Engineering and Optics, the University of Rochester has an unprecedented opportunity to be number one in the world in the growing field of biomedical optics," said University of Rochester President Joel Seligman.

For more information, visit: www.rochester.edu