• Press Release

Leon and Norma Hess Center for Science and Medicine Opens at Mount Sinai

The state-of-the-art facility expands research capacity, fosters real-time collaboration; Mount Sinai also unveils a new brand and logo

  • New York
  • (December 13, 2012)

The Leon and Norma Hess Center for Science and Medicine at Mount Sinai officially opened Thursday, housing significant areas of six of Mount Sinai's most influential institutes focusing on brain, cancer, heart, children's health, genomics and imaging. With a half-million square feet of space, the Hess Center increases the medical center's research capacity by nearly 30 percent and is designed to facilitate real-time collaboration between physicians, investigators, and specialists from across disciplines.

To capture the forward movement of the institution, Mount Sinai has also revealed a new brand to coincide with the opening of the new building. The new logo is derived from the historic Mount Sinai Mountain range and the intersection lines represent the connection between physicians, scientists, patients and students and the members of the Mount Sinai community.

"The Hess Center will serve as the focal point of Mount Sinai's research and clinical programs," said Kenneth L. Davis, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Mount Sinai Medical Center. "The combination of world-class faculty and state-of-the-art equipment and facilities will expand our ability to understand and treat the most challenging medical problems in areas such as cancer, heart disease, and brain and nervous system disorders."

Ranked #14 among hospitals and among the top 20 medical schools in the nation, the new Hess Center will house both clinical and research facilities of The Tisch Cancer Institute, as well as laboratories for The Friedman Brain Institute, the Cardiovascular Research Institute, the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology, and the Translational and Molecular Imaging Institute. By expanding Mount Sinai's research footprint, the Hess Center is expected to draw more than $350 million in National Institutes of Health funding over its first five years.

"Mount Sinai is a magnet for world-class researchers making critical contributions toward the understanding of the cause of human disease," said Dennis S. Charney, MD, the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Medical Center. "The new building literally brings these great minds together in a shared space where they can easily brainstorm and collaborate on new ideas. We designed the building to foster communication, because new findings can come from unexpected directions."

In the new building, clinical space for cancer patients has expanded to 50,000 square feet. A centralized space combining examination and consultation rooms, with easy access to a chemotherapy suite, enhances multi-disciplinary care and comfort for patients. Laboratory space incorporates flexible design to host promising areas of research as they emerge. To foster collaboration, the Hess Center's six full floors of laboratory space are connected to two floors of outpatient clinical space. An open staircase connects all research floors, with shared white boards spanning the walls of each landing.

"Cancer today is all about translation: the ability to go from bench to bedside and back again is truly extraordinary," said Steven Burakoff, MD and Director of The Tisch Cancer Institute. "Our clinical setup provides multi-disciplinary care right in the building: radiation, infusion, imaging, and genomics will be there. We can share ideas with the cardiovascular institute, imaging, neuroscience, genomics and child health – and be near the patients. This is spectacular."

"Being closer to our colleagues allows us to share information more quickly and collaborate in new ways. For example, the tools that evolve out of cancer biology and cardiovascular biology will give us novel ways of influencing brain function, perhaps leading to novel brain therapeutics," said Eric Nestler, MD, PhD and Director of The Friedman Brain Institute. "We'll begin to crack some of the major illnesses of our time, like Alzheimer's disease and autism."

The space also promotes greater access to technology across disciplines, including a new 2,200-square-foot data center that quadruples the capacity of Minerva, Mount Sinai's high-performance supercomputer, which already ranks among the largest systems in academic medicine in the U.S.

"Constructing and applying comprehensive predictive models is the future of better diagnosing and treating disease, and requires the high-end super-computer and data management infrastructure, which we have in the Hess Center," said Eric Schadt, PhD, Director of the Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology. "These are the tools that are going to take us beyond a single-gene understanding and into a network-based understanding of common human diseases."

Combined MRI and PET technology, together one of the most powerful whole body MRI scanner and unique Computed Tomography technology, will allow physician-scientists to improve diagnostic accuracy and "see" novel therapies at work.

The Hess Center is one of few research facilities to open this year in the United States, and it is the first to be completed, or even started, in New York City. The research and clinical facility will generate almost 800 jobs as scientists, clinicians, technicians, administrators, and building operators over the next four years. To learn more about the Hess Center, go to http://www.mssm.edu/about-us/hess-center. For videos, including a virtual tour, go to http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA7015FC51DEB3ED5.

For the new Mount Sinai logo, intersecting lines in vibrant colors of cyan and deep magenta overlap to create the color violet. This combination of colors serves as a metaphor for multiple parts of Mount Sinai that work together to create something new. To see the Mount Sinai logo and to learn more about the brand, go to www.mountsinai.org.

About The Mount Sinai Medical Center
The Mount Sinai Medical Center encompasses both The Mount Sinai Hospital and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Established in 1968, the Icahn School of Medicine is one of the leading medical schools in the United States, and is noted for innovation in education, biomedical research, clinical care delivery, and local and global community service. It has more than 3,400 faculty in 32 departments and 14 research institutes, and ranks among the top 20 medical schools both in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding and by U.S. News & World Report.

The Mount Sinai Hospital, founded in 1852, is a 1,171-bed tertiary- and quaternary-care teaching facility and one of the nation's oldest, largest and most-respected voluntary hospitals. In 2012, U.S. News & World Report ranked The Mount Sinai Hospital 14th on its elite Honor Roll of the nation's top hospitals based on reputation, safety, and other patient-care factors. Mount Sinai is one of 12 integrated academic medical centers whose medical school ranks among the top 20 in NIH funding and by U.S. News & World Report and whose hospital is on the U.S. News & World Report Honor Roll. Nearly 60,000 people were treated at Mount Sinai as inpatients last year, and approximately 560,000 outpatient visits took place.

For more information, visit http://www.mountsinai.org.
Find Mount Sinai on:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mountsinainyc
Twitter @mountsinainyc @multiscalebio
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/mountsinainy

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About the Mount Sinai Health System

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with 48,000 employees working across seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, more than 600 research and clinical labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time—discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.

Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 9,000 primary and specialty care physicians and 11 free-standing joint-venture centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida. Hospitals within the System are consistently ranked by Newsweek’s® “The World’s Best Smart Hospitals, Best in State Hospitals, World Best Hospitals and Best Specialty Hospitals” and by U.S. News & World Report's® “Best Hospitals” and “Best Children’s Hospitals.” The Mount Sinai Hospital is on the U.S. News & World Report® “Best Hospitals” Honor Roll for 2024-2025.

For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and YouTube.

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