To be built on Gayley Road, adjacent to the campus's East Gate, the 285,000-sf building will house the Bioengineering, Biotechnology and Quantitative Biomedical Research Institute, better known to those on campus as QB3. The 11 story structure will have eight floors above ground and three below.

The project, which will replace the existing Stanley Hall, is one of the largest building projects the university has undertaken in recent years. The new facility will support seven research themes that will intermingle scientists from a range of disciplines, such as structural biology, bioengineering, chemical biology, computation and theoretical biology, and magnetic imaging.

Moreover, the building will house the West Coast's only 900-megahertz nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer, a high-powered device that allows scientists to create images that show the structures of proteins. It will also include a Bio-Nano Technology Center and 40 research and teaching laboratories that can each staff between 10 and 20 scientists, as well as support functions, such as classrooms and seminar facilities.