Billed as the world’s largest gathering for laboratory medicine, the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC) annual meeting, held this week at the George Brown R. Convention Center in Houston, is designed to bring together world exports in lab design and lab management, analytic and clinical chemistry, and microbiology.
Houston is the Logical Choice for AACC Annual Meeting
Home to a broad range of laboratories designed to investigate scientific questions, ranging from cancer research and space medicine to medical applications for nanotechnology and pharmacological drug trials, Houston is a logical choice to host the AACC annual meeting.
As a city best known as the world’s energy capital, Houston has steadily diversified its technology base. While its economy was once highly concentrated in the oil sector, the Houston region now boasts a significant number of important scientific research laboratories designed to further research in key areas of healthcare, clinical medicine, toxicology and more.
Understanding Key Regional Research Labs
Let’s take a quick tour of some of the region’s key research labs, starting with Johnson Space Center, whose laboratory facilities are designed to support human spaceflight training, research, and flight control.
Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC)
Located on the south side of Houston near Galveston Bay, the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is a key facility within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). First opened in 1963, JSC is perhaps best known as the home of ‘Mission Control’ for the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions. Many of JSC’s laboratories are designed to train the astronauts for flight operations and Formaspace is proud to count JSC as one of its laboratory furniture customers. They seem to value our maple work surfaces for their high durability and easy maintenance, ideal for more industrial labs.
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth)
Our next research lab stop is UTHealth, located in the renowned Texas Medical Center, whose fifty member institutions include hundreds of laboratories designed to advance medical research in clinical patient care.
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) is the cornerstone of medical education at the Texas Medical Center. UTHealth boasts six medical schools, including dentistry, medicine, nursing, biomedical informatics, and biomedical informatics, with annual research expenditures exceeding $225 million annually. Its primary teaching hospitals are Memorial Hermann, Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital and Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital. UTHealth is also a Formaspace laboratory furniture customer, purchasing c-arms based on a prototype we generated for them as well as epoxy lab benches.
Rice University
Adjacent to the Texas Medical Center is Rice University, known for its labs designed to discover new advances in pharmaceutical drug development, cancer research and nanotechnology science.
Rice University has a very strong focus on applied science, with sponsored research funding totaling over $115 million annually. Rice University is a noted laboratory research leader in the fields of materials science and nanotechnology, space science, cancer research and medical device development, including laboratory research on the design of artificial heart devices. And we’re happy to say they are a Formaspace laboratory furniture customer as well.
The University of Houston (UH)
Located nearby, the University of Houston is also home to an impressive number of labs designed to support biomedical science and space research.
Just east of Rice University is the University of Houston (UH), the third-largest university in Texas. In recent years, UH has invested heavily in research laboratories in an effort designed to solidify its position as a ‘tier one’ research university. Over $130 million is spent annually on research across more than 40 research centers and nearly 50 campus laboratories. Like the other institutions on our Houston tour, University of Houston is also a Formaspace laboratory furniture customer who values our phenolic resin lab benches and epoxy tables for its science and research labs.
Formaspace Wishes You a Great Annual Meeting
In close, we’d like to extend warm greetings to the lab design and clinical chemistry experts attending the AACC annual meeting. We look forward to learning about some of the latest scientific discoveries which will be presented this week.
This concludes our quick tour of Houston’s leading research lab institutions, although there are much more across the region which we hope to feature in a future article. Also, don’t forget that if you happen to be looking for a laboratory design partner, be sure to make contact with us here at Formaspace today. Our experts can help you design your laboratory and equip it with the exact modern modular or traditional casework lab furniture you want.
