Health Sciences Research Facility III Ribbon-Cutting
Oct. 24, 2018
University of Maryland School of Medicine
Thank you, Dean Reece. Good morning, everyone. And what an incredible morning it is. It was nearly five years ago to the day that we broke ground on this amazing building. We talked then about its potential to deepen our mission of scientific discovery, and to redraw the boundaries of human knowledge.
We talked about its potential to save and enrich lives—to diminish the burden of disease and alleviate human suffering. We talked about its potential to kindle economic growth in the city and state, and to ensure that that growth embraces our Baltimore neighbors—that they are included in the investment that strengthens communities.
If you think that maybe we put too much stock in a mere building—that we overstate its importance—let me share with you what Louis Pasteur had to say about laboratories: “Demand that they be multiplied, he said … that they be adorned. These are the temples of the future—temples of well-being and of happiness. There it is that humanity grows greater, stronger, better.
This building is our temple of the future, our incubator for inquiry and invention. It’s where our pioneering research will find a home built on collaboration. It’s where new innovations and technologies—created from that research—will take shape.
This is where we’ll develop and deploy our people to solve the problems that challenge us locally and globally. And it’s where our next generation of biomedical researchers will see the enormous power of putting science to work.
This building is a promise—a promise that we will continue to invest ourselves in this city and state, that we will invest ourselves in the people and ideas that are, right now, revolutionizing human health and well-being.
Dr. Pasteur advised us to “Live in the serene peace of laboratories and libraries.” And here I’ll disagree only slightly. I hope there’s little serenity to be found in this building. I hope it’s a focal point of activity.
I know it was in the laboratory that many of us first fell in love with learning. For many of us, laboratories were our first experience with education in action. I hope this building, and the people who work here, will stoke that same fire in the youth of this city.
Every time our neighborhood children walk through these doors, and see the future being written here, I hope they come to see themselves in the laboratory. I hope they fall in love with learning, over and over again.
I thank the Governor, the General Assembly, and all the state and city leaders who long ago understood the power of this extraordinary building and supported its construction. I thank the friends and donors who have similarly made this day possible. This is our temple of discovery and knowledge and progress, and I’m grateful to everyone who helped build it.
Thank you.
