World-Class Laboratories & Facilities

When it comes to empowering ideas, we’re state of the art.

Researchers should concentrate on research, not resources. Our comprehensive, state-of-the-art facilities allow them to do just that.

Here’s a sampling of the 1,600+ laboratories our researchers have at their disposal. You can learn more about our facilities on the websites for our 130+ centers and institutes.

Core Facilities

BU has more than 40 facilities across campuses that provide services, expertise, and instruments for high-quality research. Some labs are specific to their supporting groups; most are available on a fee-for-service basis to researchers both inside and outside the University.

Boston Medical Center

Boston Medical Center (BMC) is the primary teaching hospital for Boston University School of Medicine. BMC provides a full range of pediatric and adult care while serving as New England’s largest safety-net hospital and the region’s largest provider of trauma and emergency services.

Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering

The Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering is the epicenter of interdisciplinary research in systems neuroscience, cognitive neuroimaging, and biological design. The cutting-edge facility, supported by a $100 million endowment, brings together faculty and students from across Boston University to solve challenges such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, accelerating our understanding of memory and speech, and delivering on the promise of synthetic biology to make molecules and tissues that mimic natural function and improve lives.

Photonics Center

The science and engineering of light is sparking a revolution in education, interdisciplinary research, business innovation, and technology development. Driven by more than 55 BU faculty researchers and over $20 million of annual support, our Photonics Center has developed technologies for commercial, military, and healthcare applications. Supported by a state-of-the-art facility that includes more than a dozen special-purpose laboratories, research spans biophotonics, imaging, nanophotonics, nonlinear and quantum optics, and photonics materials and devices.

New Data Sciences Building

Seeking to become a leader in one of the hottest fields nationally and internationally, the University plans to construct a 350,000-square-foot, 17-story facility to house a new Data Sciences Center. The building will bring the mathematics and statistics and computer science departments and the Hariri Institute under one roof. BU decided to invest in computational sciences, which has grown into a powerhouse discipline at the University with significant demand from faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students in all fields.