BATON ROUGE – Officials met on LSU's campus Friday to formally open the new Our Lady of the Lake Health Interdisciplinary Science Building.

The new building, located at the corner of South Stadium Drive and Tower Drive, will be the home to 1,150 students, faculty and researchers.

"We all know that we have lots of talent in the state of Louisiana, but we also have a little bit of a talent drain going on, and part of that is because we don't have the facilities and the technology in an educational environment, and that's why we felt it was so important to be part of this state of the art facility, and it's going to really set us up for success down the road," Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady President and CEO EJ Kuiper said at a Friday ribbon-cutting.

The facilities in the four-story, $148 million building will include expanded research and teaching laboratories, which LSU officials say will accelerate the timeline to graduation for students in highly sought-after STEM fields, including biological sciences, chemistry, geology and geophysics, mathematics and physics and astronomy.

Among the new facilities will be a first-of-its-kind laboratory on LSU's campus that expands research capabilities in trace metals analysis and supports high-impact research across science, health and industry. 

The building was funded by a $15 million investment from Our Lady of the Lake, a $10 million investment from LCMC Health, a $5 million gift from Dr. Mary and Ron Neal, $43 million from LSU donors and $105 million from the state of Louisiana.