What is the Ricketts Laboratory?
The Ricketts Laboratory will be a highly secure and safe infectious disease research facility, built and operated by the University of Chicago, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), and sited on land owned by the U.S. Department of Energy at Argonne National Laboratory, southwest of Chicago. NIAID is one of the National Institutes of Health. The lab will cost approximately $31 million to build and will be approximately 35,000 square feet, consisting of office space, Biosafety Level 2 (BSL-2) and Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) laboratories, vivarium for work with small animals. The Ricketts Laboratory is one of the original nine Regional Biocontainment Laboratory (RBL) funded under NIAID’s biodefense initiative announced in the second half of 2002. In October of 2005, NIAID announced funding for an additional four RBLs, bringing the total number of RBLs in the biodefense network to thirteen. NIAID’s biodefense network includes support for the design and
