Official Opening of CALEDO Research Building

“With the new CALEDO building, we are creating optimal working conditions for outstanding scientists who are conducting research on topics important for the future. The development of innovative solvents, for example, can improve drug efficiency to the benefit of all patients. At the same time, this new state-of-the-art research building will make RESOLV, the joint Cluster of Excellence of TU Dortmund University and Ruhr University Bochum (RUB), even more attractive to the best researchers,” said Ina Brandes, Minister for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Federal Government, the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and TU Dortmund University have invested around €90 million in the new building and major instrumentation.

Special laboratories

CALEDO is the acronym for “Center for Advanced Liquid-Phase Engineering Dortmund”. The four-floor building with an inner courtyard has 3,600 m² of usable floor space, with special laboratories for researchers from the following three departments: Biochemical and Chemical Engineering, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and Physics. Responsible for the building’s construction was BLB NRW (North Rhine-Westphalia’s building and real estate management authority), whose Dortmund branch formed a project team together with the Corporate Center Construction and Facility Management at TU Dortmund University. The building, with its reddish brickwork, rounded corners and ribbon windows, was designed by Gerber, a renowned architects’ office in Dortmund.

“What made the construction work so challenging and unique, apart from its special façade, was the high demands on technical building services. In addition to office space and conference rooms, we as BLB NRW have built highly specialized laboratories – and in so doing created space for cutting-edge research at TU Dortmund University,” said Gabriele Willems, Managing Director of BLB NRW. The laboratories are equipped with major instrumentation worth around €10 million that allows state-of-the-art analysis for all aspects of complex liquid phase design.

CALEDO’s analysis facilities will be at the disposal of all scientists at TU Dortmund University and, in the future, will also be available to researchers of the University Alliance Ruhr. “CALEDO is an important institution for TU Dortmund University overall as well as for the Ruhr Innovation Lab, our joint application with Ruhr University Bochum for a University Consortium of Excellence, where it will play a central role,” said Professor Manfred Bayer, President of TU Dortmund University.

Professor Gabriele Sadowski, CALEDO’s spokesperson, explained how investigating complex liquid phases will lead to more effective research in the future: “If we have a better understanding of the interactions between the molecules involved and the liquid phases surrounding them, we can, for example, greatly reduce the number of costly and time-consuming tests, find a substitute for toxic and ecologically questionable solvents and even contribute to the production of more stable drugs.” Professor Sadowski and Dr. Christoph Brandenbusch from the Department of Biochemical and Chemical Engineering applied for the research building together with team colleagues. They were successful in three competitive rounds before the decision was finally reached and received approval from the German Science and Humanities Council in 2020.

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