Barnard College unveils new $250 million state-of-the-art Roy and Diana Vagelos Science Center
Updated: Sep 17
Replacing Altschul Hall, the highly anticipated $250 million Roy and Diana Vagelos Science Center will celebrate its grand opening this Friday, welcoming the Barnard and greater Morningside Heights community.
Photo by Abigail Rabbitt/The Barnard Bulletin
September 15, 2026
After over two years of construction, the 14-story Roy and Diana Vagelos Science Center (RDSC) has opened to Barnard College students and faculty, with an official grand opening scheduled for Friday, September 18, from 2-5 p.m.
Formerly Altschul Hall, the 167,000-square-foot building features a new glass extension, a vivarium, and will house the Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Environmental Sciences, Neuroscience & Behavior, and Physics & Astronomy departments — each with its own faculty office spaces, teaching labs, research facilities, and collaboration space. The RDSC’s $250 million budget includes an initial donation of $55 million from Roy (MD ’54) and Diana (BC ’55) Vagelos, the largest gift in the College’s history.
Designed by the architecture firm Perkins&Will, the RDSC was built with an emphasis on learning, research, sustainability, and accessibility for the growing number of STEM majors at Barnard. The building also hopes to engage Morningside Heights K-12 students interested in STEM through community programming.
Academics
At Barnard, support for STEM fields has grown in recent years, with the College introducing new faculty positions and increasing research funding. In 2025, as part of Barnard’s STEM-focused Summer Research Institute (SRI), the College received a total of $1.75 million in grants to support student research. A year later, Barnard introduced newly endowed faculty positions with its “Search for Herbert and Florence Irving Professors” in computer science, biology, and biophysics.
“We’re particularly proud that nationwide, only about 20 percent of female undergraduates major in a STEM field, but at Barnard, we are at about 50 percent of our students major in STEM,” Barnard President Laura Rosenbury told The Barnard Bulletin.
With around half of Barnard students majoring in STEM, the RDSC provides 87,000 square feet for state-of-the-art labs, classrooms, and collaborative areas, effectively doubling the science space previously available at Barnard. The new spaces include both labs designed for faculty research and instructional use.
Seminar rooms in the glass extension to the north of the building.
Photo by Abigail Rabbitt/The Barnard Bulletin
One of Barnard’s most-enrolled classes is the organic chemistry teaching lab, a required course for most STEM majors and pre-med students. In Spring 2026, 260 students were enrolled in the course. With the opening of the RDSC, and its two chemistry labs being the largest in the building, Barnard students will no longer need to take their labs at Columbia.
Like several of the RDSC’s teaching labs, the organic chemistry lab features glass vent hoods, letting students see their peers and instructor throughout the lab while also being a major safety feature. Every teaching lab is fully equipped with a suite of audio-visual equipment that allows professors to bring in experts virtually or provide remote instruction.
Organic chemistry teaching labs feature new glass fume hoods.
Photo by Abigail Rabbitt/The Barnard Bulletin
In addition to the new space for laboratory courses, the RDSC houses research facilities for faculty research, in which students often also participate.
Neuroscience research facilities were designed with faculty to prioritize collaboration and space flexibility.
Photo by Abigail Rabbitt/The Barnard Bulletin
The RDSC also features a brand-new vivarium, a specialized lab used to study live animals, on the top floor of the building.
Rosenbury stated that Barnard previously “only had the facilities to do research on invertebrate animals like bees and flies.”
“With this vivarium, we will be able to do research on mice and gerbils on Barnard’s campus, as opposed to our students having to go to Columbia,” she said.
With the complicated nature of constructing these specialized research facilities in mind, Barnard chose the Perkins&Will architecture firm for its previous work on science buildings.
“We also chose them because of their commitment to making sure that the building was designed around our students’ needs, meaning female students,” Rosenbury noted.
To fulfill this commitment, Perkins&Will modeled the benches in every lab on the average woman’s height, rather than traditional lab benches based on the average man’s height.
Work stations in an RDSC lab.
Photo by Abigail Rabbitt/The Barnard Bulletin
In addition, the RDSC was designed to accommodate accessibility needs. In Altschul, most lab classrooms lacked wheelchair-accessible stations, but the new building now contains at least one in each lab. Additionally, at the accessible benches, light switches are positioned lower for easy reach and include levers instead of knobs.
“That was very intentional, that we make sure this could be a building that could be used by every single student,” said President Rosenbury.
Sustainability
As President Rosenbury stated, the RDSC is “the first all-electric, net zero, carbon-neutral academic science building in New York.”
“We are so proud of that,” President Rosenbury told The Bulletin. “We’re using no fossil fuels in the operation of the RDSC.”
According to a College spokesperson, the building takes on a multistep approach to sustainability, targeting carbon neutrality, energy and water efficiency, and waste diversion.
To eliminate on-site fossil fuel use, Altschul’s gas- and oil-powered steam boiler heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) plant was replaced with a new electrified heat pump system. The system uses pumps for both heating and cooling, filters the air, and automatically adapts to real-time occupancy and weather conditions.
Energy waste is further minimized by reusing outgoing air, and renewable energy credits will offset the remaining emissions caused by electricity use.
Along with energy conservation, the building reduces indoor water use with infrastructure such dual-flush toilets and low-flow fixtures. The RDSC is projected to reduce indoor water use by 28 percent, according to a College spokesperson.
The College spokesperson further highlighted that Altschul Hall had originally been constructed using horizontal beams, which enabled Perkins&Will to reorganize the building and build on top of existing infrastructure. This allowed them to reduce the amount of embodied carbon emitted by an estimated 52 percent, rather than having to build from scratch. Materials were also reused for various interior finishes and the brick pavers on the 119th Street ramp.
According to a press release by Perkins&Will, the RDSC is designed to meet the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold standard, a high-level sustainability building certification based on various factors such as energy efficiency. A College spokesperson noted that the RDSC saves an additional 32 percent of energy from the LEED baseline and is on track to comply with the New York City Energy Conservation Code.
Receiving a LEED Gold certification would make the RDSC the third building on Barnard’s campus to be LEED validated. The Diana Center received LEED Gold certification in 2011, while the Milstein Center is certified LEED Silver.
“The LEED Gold target is less about the certification itself and more about demonstrating that the project is taking a comprehensive approach to sustainability, addressing the environmental impacts of the building while also creating a healthy and high-performing space for Barnard’s students and faculty,” a College spokesperson stated.
President Rosenbury emphasized Barnard’s vision of working toward an environmentally low-impact campus in the future.
“We had a goal of reaching net zero [carbon emissions] for the entire campus by 2040, and this building is the first major step toward us reaching that goal,” she said.
Community Impact
The RCSC was also designed with the intention of fostering collaboration and community. “We want all of our buildings, of course, to be the site of cutting-edge teaching and research, but also to be places where our community can gather,” said President Rosenbury.
Each department has a dedicated collaboration space that is non-reservable and open to all, complete with a smartboard and kitchenette space. President Rosenbury expressed the hope that these facilities will reinforce Barnard’s close-knit community, stating, “Our community of care is such an important part of Barnard’s ethos, and we want informal spaces … as a way to gather in more intimate settings, outside of the lab or a big lecture hall.”
The collaboration space in the Environmental Sciences department.
Photo by Abigail Rabbitt/The Barnard Bulletin
In addition, she emphasized the goal of engaging Morningside Heights community members through the Community Science Center, which is located in the lower level next to the Claremont Avenue entrance to the building. The Community Science Center will host Barnard science programs open to New York City K-12 students, such as Science in the City, Math and the City, and the newly launched STEAM in the City.
“We hope to bring in groups of high school students, particularly the students who are interested in STEM. We hope to have it be a space for community organizations who want to gather for science or non-science-related purposes. We can use it for public education, as well,” President Rosenbury stated. “That was also a really important part of the project.”
Program participants will still need to officially register for access to the facility through Community Accountability, Response, and Emergency Services (CARES), as campus access is still restricted to Columbia and Barnard affiliates.
The future of STEM at Barnard
As of this month, the Environmental Sciences and Physics & Astronomy departments at Barnard have been fully relocated into the RDSC, while the Biological Sciences, Chemistry, and Neuroscience & Behavior departments are in the process of moving. The move is anticipated to be fully complete by January 2027.
"I want to ... emphasize how grateful we are to Diana and Roy Vagelos for giving us the initial gift that got this project going ... and really helping us provide a much more cutting-edge experience for our students," stated President Rosenbury.
As the STEM major population grows at Barnard, the RDSC represents the College’s intention to support and expand the scope of scientific learning and discovery for students.
