Editor's note: This story was updated on Oct. 21, 2026, to reflect the new name of the building.
189,000 square feet of dedicated research space.
7 research clusters working to solve problems that matter.
300 researchers breaking down silos to share expertise, ideas and tools.
1 question: What happens when you stop organizing science around disciplines and start organizing it around problems?
Case Western Reserve University is about to find out as it opens the new Roger E. Susi Interdisciplinary Research Building.
In a new series, The Daily introduces the research, people and building that will define Case Western Reserve’s next chapter of discovery. We’ll go inside each of the seven research clusters and the resources that make the work possible.
Earth, examined: Climate & Ecosystem Science
The Climate & Ecosystem Science research cluster unites Case Western Reserve University investigators whose work spans from geological history to today’s living rooms; from algal blooms in Lake Erie to Arctic permafrost; from microbes to entire oceans. Together, they will study how a changing world affects its inhabitants—humans, animals, organisms, viruses—and how said inhabitants, in turn, shape the world.
Nature's blueprints: NeuroRobotics
To build robots, CWRU researchers have long turned to biology for inspiration, studying worms, crabs, sea slugs, moths and other animals to understand how they sense, move and adapt. The very nature of this work intersects disciplines—intersections that will evolve as the NeuroRobotics cluster connects bio-inspired models to practical, real-world problems. They aim to build adaptable robots that can operate reliably in messy, unpredictable environments where needs are greatest.
Nerve center: NeuroTechnology
CWRU researchers have developed technologies that reach the brain, the spinal cord, and the body's vast network of peripheral nerves to restore what neurological diseases and injury take away: sensation, function and movement. Based on the third floor of the Susi Building, researchers in the NeuroTechnology cluster will expand and advance that work, building on CWRU's half-century legacy of expertise in biomedical engineering research and expertise.
Collaborative cures: Molecular Therapeutics
On the second floor of the Susi Building, the Molecular Therapeutics cluster unites researchers from the College of Arts and Sciences and School of Medicine—chemists, pharmacologists, geneticists, and chemical biologists—to move promising ideas from the lab to patients in areas such as cancer, immunology and vision. The cluster will be "the beating heart of the academic drug discovery efforts on campus," said Drew Adams, PhD, faculty lead for the cluster.
Targeting solutions: Precision Diagnostics & Therapeutics
The Precision Diagnostics & Therapeutics cluster on the Susi Building's second floor will develop tools, techniques and technologies to close the loop between identifying what a patient needs and delivering it—at the right moment, in the exact amount, for that specific individual. The researchers have collaborated for years. Under one roof, they'll take their research further, working toward impactful biomedical diagnostic and therapeutic applications
Forged for impact: Advanced Materials & Manufacturing
A team of scientists within the Advanced Materials & Manufacturing cluster at Case Western Reserve University will work to discover, develop and improve materials and the processes used to make them. On the first floor of the Susi Building, the cluster will train students for the advanced manufacturing workforce and deepen partnerships with the industries whose hardest problems they are working to solve.
Charged with purpose: James M. Galm, PhD, PE Electrochemical Engineering & Energy Science
The James M. Galm, PhD, PE Electrochemical Engineering & Energy Science cluster will concentrate and accelerate the university’s electrochemistry expertise on the Susi Building first floor, where researchers will tackle pressing challenges: developing next-generation energy storage, advancing semiconductor manufacturing, enabling domestic production of critical metals and exploring electrochemical techniques to clean up pollutants.
From ideas to breakthroughs: Susi Building's shared resources
Great ideas ignite when disciplines and sectors intersect. Michael Oakes, PhD, calls these moments social collisions: unplanned interactions, like when a chemist meets an engineer in the coffee line. In the new Susi Building—equipped with advanced instrumentation, shared resources and experts to run them—sparks will have the chance to become breakthroughs.
Where problems are solved: Roger E. Susi Interdisciplinary Research Building
When the Susi Building welcomes its new tenants, a scientist creating entirely new materials will share the stairwell with someone building bio-inspired robots. A research associate studying battery chemistry will work one floor below a team developing a new drug delivery system. Professors studying algal blooms will ride the elevator with students working to restore movement in patients with paralysis.
They don't yet know all the ways their expertise, techniques and equipment can benefit one another, but the building is designed to reveal that.
