UT Dallas Facility To Be Dedicated Jan. 26

The new home of the Center for BrainHealth, a highly regarded clinical and research arm of The University of Texas at Dallas, will be formally dedicated on Friday, Jan. 26, in a 10:30 a.m. ceremony at 2200 Mockingbird Lane in Dallas.

Expected to attend the event are representatives from the University of Texas System, including Chancellor Mark G. Yudof and Regent John W. Barnhill, Jr.

The center’s new building is a three-story, 63,000-square-foot renovated office situated on a three-and-one-half-acre site.  Its acquisition was made possible by a $5 million gift from Dallas community leader Dianne Cash, whose mother had been helped by the staff and management of the center.  

Named the Frances and Mildred Goad Building in honor of Ms. Cash’s mother, Frances Goad Cecil, and grandmother, Mildred Crews Goad, the facility contains offices, educational and public spaces, numerous conference rooms, children’s work and play areas, learning spaces and observation and interview rooms.  It also features an auditorium that seats approximately 220 people.

At capacity, the building will house more than 200 researchers, post-doctoral fellows, doctoral and master’s students and research clinicians.  The center’s founder and director, Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman, who also holds the Dee Wyly Distinguished Chair for Brain Health at UT Dallas, anticipates that as many as 50 research projects will be ongoing at any given time, ranging from neuroscience breakthroughs, to studies about stroke, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, traumatic brain injury, normal aging complications and psychiatric diseases.  

The facility also will be home to several current and future collaborative research efforts involving UT Dallas, UT Southwestern, UT Arlington, Children’s Medical Center and other research institutes across the country focused on research and treatment of brain diseases, brain injuries and healthy brain aging.

“We believe this new facility will allow us to become an important hub of scientific research that will help solve some of the most vexing questions associated with the human brain,” Chapman said.  “The building will undoubtedly increase the center’s multidisciplinary research and clinical collaborations exponentially, but what I am truly excited about are the many patients and families we will be able to help — and provide hope for — as a result.”

Each floor of the building is dedicated to carrying out specific aspects of the center’s mission.  The first floor contains an auditorium where researchers will present seminars and where there will be public talks.  Also on the first floor is a virtual classroom where researchers around the world will link up via video conference.
 
The second floor contains high-powered computers and data analysis tools, as well as an outlet for brain scientists, engineers and technology experts to explore data.  The third floor houses clinically based research projects, including a facility for individuals to undergo brain physicals for discovering ways to prevent memory decline and a place for adults and children to participate in research aimed at learning more about how to strengthen brain function after injury or disease.

Equipment at the center includes state-of-of-the-art electroencephalography laboratories that record the brain’s electrical rhythms during cognitive task performance, high capacity computers to perform brain-imaging analyses from a functional MRI machine and a brain morphometric laboratory that measures the size of brain regions to millimeter accuracy.

Originally constructed in 1970, the redesign and remodel was an extensive undertaking that began in June 2005 and was completed in September.  In order to create its unique exterior, perforated copper panels and reflective glass replaced the heavy concrete “skin” of the building. 

The project was managed by HKS, Inc. of Dallas, one of the nation’s top five architectural firms.  The principal designer was Kyley Harvey and the contractor was Charter Builders, Ltd.

The center previously was located at the Callier Center for Communication Disorders on Inwood Road near downtown.  Both the Callier Center and the Center for BrainHealth are part of UT Dallas’ School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

The dedication also will serve as celebration for the recent gift from Dallas businessman and philanthropist T. Boone Pickens, who donated $5 million to the university to fund educational and research initiatives in brain science.  Pickens’ gift will enhance the faculty, facilities and research programs at the center, and will allow for the creation of the T. Boone Pickens Distinguished Chair in Clinical Brain Science and the T. Boone Pickens Virtual Learning Center, a one-of-a-kind computer learning facility with software programs for interactive learning.

The center is located at 2200 W. Mockingbird, near Love Field and on the corner of Mockingbird and Forest Park.  From Central Expressway, take the Lemmon Avenue exit.  Go west to Inwood and turn left, heading south.  Take a right on Forest Park and continue about three blocks to Mockingbird.  The parking lot is currently under construction, but parking will be available in the lot immediately adjacent to the building.  To get there, turn on Treadway (east side of the building) off Forest Park.

About HKS

For more than 65 years, HKS has nurtured a culture that reveres both invention and customer focus.  A top-four architectural firm headquartered in Dallas, HKS has offices in Atlanta, Denver, Detroit, Fort Worth, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orange County, Orlando, Phoenix, Richmond, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Tampa, Washington DC, Mexico City and London.  The firm’s project experience includes commercial, healthcare, sports, hospitality, governmental, aviation, educational, retail and industrial projects located in 758 cities located in 46 states, the District of Columbia and 41 foreign countries.

About the Center for BrainHealth

The Center for BrainHealth has a unique mission:  to unite brain research and brain therapies in an active partnership to build healthy minds and restore health to injured and diseased minds.  No other institution in America has undertaken this dual mission.  The center, a scientific institute of The University of Texas at Dallas, is dedicated to understanding the brain’s ability to restore or protect healthy function, protect the brain through preventive measures for people of all ages and healing the brain through treatments that regenerate brain function.  For more information about the Center for BrainHealth and its work, please visit the organization’s website, www.centerforbrainhealth.org.

About UT Dallas

The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor, enrolls more than 14,500 students.  The school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores.  The university offers a broad assortment of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs.  For additional information about UT Dallas, please visit the university’s website at www.utdallas.edu.

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