Couple donates $10M to Ohio State to create facility for brain health
A $10 million gift to Ohio State University will boost its quest to enhance and preserve the human brain’s performance in athletic, military and corporate pursuits, as well as in other walks of life, officials said in announcing the donation on Tuesday.
There is little science behind much of the gaming and training that some people use to keep their minds nimble as they age, said Dr. Ali Rezai, an OSU neurosurgeon and advocate for a center dedicated to brain health in large populations.
Rezai attended the Wexner Medical Center board meeting and said that will change thanks to the Stanley D. and Joan H. Ross Center for Brain Health and Performance, named for the two longtime supporters of the program. The center is being made possible by that $10 million donation from the Rosses.
In 2011, the couple endowed the neuromodulation chair currently held by Rezai. Mr. Ross, a retired attorney who lives in central Ohio, is the nephew of Richard M. Ross, for whom Ohio State’s heart hospiance tal is named.
Rezai said he and other neuroscientists have been working on a strategic plan for studying how best to regain, retain and optimize “the wellbeing and function of our brains from youth to advanced age.”
He said officials already have collaborated with brain-health experts nationally, as well as at the 711th Human Performance Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton.
The $10 million in funding will be used in part to recruit national leaders in the field, Rezai said.
Like the university’s brainand-spine hospital, the center for brain health and perform- will be part of the university’s neurological institute. A final decision hasn’t been made about whether it — like the hospital — will be housed inside the former Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital building.
The announcement comes just weeks before OhioHealth opens its new neuroscience center at Riverside Methodist Hospital.
The Wexner Medical Center board also signed off Tuesday on spending an additional $10 million on what the university has described as the nation’s largest sports-medicine facility.
The Jameson Crane Sports Medicine Institute now is expected to cost $45 million, with $41.3 million for construction and the remainder earmarked for professional services.
The additional funding, which will require approval on Friday by the university board of trustees, would allow for construction of an outpatient surgery suite that would include four operating rooms as well as space for two more. It also would allow for surgery support spaces and 19 pre- and post-operative rooms (16 of which will be built).
Most outpatient surgeries intended for the new center are now performed at University Hospital East, but that hospital has become busier in the past year.
That, combined with the successful launch of the university’s cancer-and-criticalcare hospital late last year, gave university officials the confidence to accelerate the addition of an outpatient surgery suite, said Jay Kasey, the university’s senior vice president for administration and planning.
“Our goal has always been to move outpatient surgery out of the main hospitals and into outpatient sites,” Kasey said.
The sports-medicine facility, slated for the southwestern corner of Ackerman Road and Fred Taylor Drive, was originally intended to open this year.
It was redesigned in the fall to make it more efficient, reducing the size from 140,000 square feet to less than 117,000 square feet. The redesign reduced construction costs by about $2.5 million but set the project back about six months, Kasey said.
Construction is expected to continue through August 2016.