At some institutions, doctors are doctors, and scientists are scientists, and although they may be headed in the same direction, their tracks are parallel, like a railroad line. They don’t talk very often, and consequently, they don’t help each other very much. It’s never been that way at the Brady Urological Institute, where doctors and scientists see each other all the time, and work on different parts of the same problems.

However, in recent years, due to a shortage of research space, some of our faculty have suffered from a campus version of suburban sprawl — tucked away at various buildings on the enormous Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions site, which encompasses several city blocks. Others, who were fortunate enough to remain in the Marburg Building, were cramped, with insufficient laboratory and office space.

Help is on the way — nearly 17,000 square feet of prime laboratory and office space on the second floor of the Park Building, which is right next door to the Marburg Building. “This much-needed new space will give us the opportunity to bring together many different groups, particularly those related to biomarker studies and prostate cancer,” says Alan W. Partin, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Brady, who has been working hard to secure research space for the Brady over the last three years. “It will also allow us to recruit new faculty.” The new space was made possible in part through gifts from The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, The Patana Fund for Research, The Zickler Family Foundation, and Luciana and Jose-Maria Castro.

In addition to the research laboratories, there will be 13 faculty offices, plus room for support staff. The design is deliberately open. “We did that to facilitate the communication between the research and clinical faculty and staff,” says the Brady’s Director of Research, Robert H. Getzenberg, Ph.D., the Donald S. Coffey Professor of Urology. “The laboratory has a floor-to-ceiling glass wall, and the faculty offices have glass walls as well, so that all who visit will be able to see team research under way.” The architectural design is also flexible, “to accommodate not only our needs today, but to adapt to changing technologies and opportunities.”