To help attract and retain the world’s top professors, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) embarked on a series of collaborative design-build research laboratories. Working with contractor MATT Construction and the lab-design team at CO Architects, Caltech offers professors the opportunity to participate in bespoke research-facility creation.
The 3,318-square-foot Shapiro Lab was designed for Caltech Professor of Chemical Engineering and Medical Engineering Mikhail Shapiro, Ph.D. This lab develops molecular technologies to image and control biological function non-invasively at the molecular level. These technologies are used to study nervous system function and disease.
For such non-invasive study, the lab pursues fundamental advances at the interface of molecular and cellular engineering with various forms of energy. The work takes advantage of naturally evolved biological structures with specific physical properties, which are used as starting points for engineering.
The lab’s key biophysical methods include magnetic resonance, ultrasound, infrared, and electrophysiology. Controlling neural activity is the primary biological focus of the research conducted in the Shapiro Lab.
To serve Dr. Shapiro’s research and teaching requirements, the design-build team reconfigured first-floor space in Caltech’s Spalding Laboratories building
