After 20 years of collecting dust, two floors in the Veterinary Medicine Basic Sciences Building (VMBSB) are finally completed.

In 1983, budget cuts forced construction on the building's eastern second and third floors to be postponed. This past June, construction of the building began again after the National Institute of Health (NIH) accepted the college's grant proposal and provided half of the funds.

The space was originally designed for labs and faculty office space, said Roberto Docampo, professor in the department of veterinary pathology. But over the years, the area has been used as a storage room for freezers and excess office furniture.

Now, the space consists of five labs, a freezer room with about 30 freezers, two data processing rooms and new offices for graduate students and faculty. Five groups of researchers will be using the new facilities for reproductive biology and infectious disease research. The infectious disease research will be dedicated to NIH.

The facilities will eliminate problems regarding shared labs.

"One faculty member was working in a graduate student's lab," Docampo said. "Space was the main reason we wanted to finish the building."

Docampo, along with David Gross, head of the veterinary biosciences department, was in charge of preparing the grant proposal. Together they led a committee of researchers whose goal was to reinstate the unused space. The University provided the remaining funds for the estimated $3 million dollar project, Docampo said.

A dedication ceremony for the new laboratory is scheduled for Nov. 1 in the atrium of the VMBSB. Thomas J. Silhavy, professor of molecular biology from Princeton University, and Asgerally Fazleabas, professor of physiology at the University of Illinois in Chicago, will speak at the symposium.