February 13 (SeeNews) - Slovenia's National Biology Institute (NIB) has opened a 36 million euro ($38.8 million) biotechnological hub in Ljubljana to bolster cutting-edge scientific research, the education ministry said.
"The new building represents extremely important progress in terms of material conditions. If we have suitable rooms for research and, even more importantly, suitable research equipment, the work of researchers is of course significantly easier and more efficient," education minister Igor Papic said at the opening ceremony, according to a press release issued by the the ministry said in a statement on Monday.
Construction of the three-storey building, comprising a laboratory area of 2,566 square meters and 1,741 square meters of offices, commenced in the summer of 2021. As much as 80% of the financing for the project was sourced from EU cohesion funds, NIB data showed.
The National Biology Institute is an independent research institution established by the Slovenian government in 1960. The institute focuses on basic, developmental, and applicative research in the fields of biotechnology, biophysics, biomedicine and system biology.
($ = 0.92774 euro)