MDI lab gets ‘challenge’ grant of $1M

BAR HARBOR – Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory recently was given $1 million in a matching challenge grant, lab officials said Thursday.

The award of the grant, from MDI Bio Lab trustee Wistar Morris, was announced at the lab’s annual meeting, held at its campus in the village of Salisbury Cove. It is a challenge grant that will establish an endowment for the laboratory, which specializes in biomedical research of marine species.

“I have done my piece and am turning it all over to you to do your piece,” Morris told meeting attendees in the lab’s Maren Auditorium.

Jerilyn Bowers, the lab’s spokeswoman, said the eventual $2 million endowment would be unrestricted and used to help fund the lab’s annual operating budget. MDI Bio Lab has 37 scientists and staff who work there year round and, in the summer, accommodates approximately 200 scientists and students.

Bowers said the lab already has raised $100,000 in matching funds. She said the lab hopes to raise the matching $1 million by the end of 2008.

Lab officials also extolled the virtues of the organization’s new laboratory building, which is under construction. The new building is being built with environmentally friendly methods and materials, with the goal of achieving a high level of certification by the U.S. Green Building Council.

On its own, the new Center for Marine Functional Genomic Studies will have about 50 percent more laboratory space than MDI Bio Lab has now, according to Dr. Charles Wray, the lab’s associate administrative director. The lab now has 2,000 to 3,000 square feet of laboratory space.

“It’s more than doubling our capacities,” Wray said.

The building will have 15,000 square feet of total space spread over three floors, including a library, offices and a training laboratory, according to Bowers. It also will house the lab’s planned bioinformatics center, for which the lab received a $4.5 million grant last year, she said.

The new facility, which, including scientific equipment, is expected to cost $7 million, is due to be completed by next summer.