Big Week for the NC Research Campus

It’s been a great week for the NCRC. First, the announcement was made Tuesday that General Mills will be opening a lab on the campus. Then, on Wednesday, we learned that the Immune Tolerance Institute will be working here as well. They will establish the Center for Critical Path Research in Immunology.

It seems that, perhaps, we might be coming out of the recession and momentum is picking up. Many of of the universities have made hires recently, and the DHMRI has clients using their facilities from up and down the eastern seaboard. Science is really starting to flourish in Kannapolis.

There has been some great reporting on both of these announcements. For more, you can check out WBTV’s story about General Mills or this Salisbury Post piece or this one about the Immune Tolerance Institute.

Building the Scientific Community

On Friday, Mike Legg, Irene Sacks and I had a fantastic lunch with Mike Luther and Sheetal Ghelani from the DHMRI. It was a catch up meeting about the DHMRI and their activities, and I walked away very impressed.

As someone with a non-scientific background, it is very easy for me to get caught up in buildings and land when I think about the NCRC. As in, cool! Another building is starting! That’s huge news!

In fact, for the past year, the activities at the DHMRI have been way cooler than another groundbreaking. And not only cooler, they have been more important.

The DHMRI is working with public and private institutions to help them solve problems and get new products to market. These institutions range from start-ups to major universities.

Yes, they have snazzy equipment at the DHMRI. But more than that, they have the ability to help scientists both here in Kannapolis and others from across the globe solve complex problems. (That’s right. They can do work remotely.)

In short, the DHMRI is the foundation for the scientific community that is the cornerstone of the transformation here in Kannapolis. As they grow and prosper, so does the NCRC.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love buildings. I think they’re great. And I especially love the high quality buildings constructed on the Campus.

But the work at the DHMRI – which we often don’t think about because they’re hidden away in a highly secure lab building – is what really matters in the long run. In the end, the NCRC will be about people, not buildings.

If you want to know more, check out their site at http://www.dhmri.org/about.html.