The Opportunity
Today’s most compelling questions cross disciplines. Climate science draws on chemistry, physics, biology, and data analysis. Neuroscience connects psychology, computation, biology, and philosophy. Reed students and faculty are already exploring these intersections with curiosity and rigor.
A new multidisciplinary sciences building will create an environment designed for the way science is practiced today: collaboratively, experimentally, and across traditional academic boundaries. It represents an opportunity to invest not simply in a building, but in the people, ideas, and discoveries that will shape Reed science for generations.
The project comes at a moment of exciting growth. Students are increasingly drawn to fields such as data science, neuroscience, biochemistry and molecular biology, and environmental studies. Purpose-built laboratories, flexible research spaces, and shared learning environments—including spaces for study, conversation, and engagement with texts—will expand opportunities for teaching, faculty-student research, and collaboration across the sciences.
The building will house a new makerspace, where students can turn ideas into action. Equipped for designing, building, prototyping, and experimentation, the space will invite students to test possibilities, learn through making, and bring together perspectives from science, technology, the arts, and humanities. It will embody the kind of fearless intellectual exploration that defines a Reed education—and create new opportunities for students and faculty to imagine what is possible together.
Reed’s science programs demonstrate what scientific excellence can look like within a liberal arts education: rigorous, collaborative, deeply curious, and grounded in close faculty-student engagement. The new multidisciplinary sciences building will build on that strength, creating the space Reed needs to educate the next generation of scientists, researchers, and thinkers—and to sustain its leadership in undergraduate science for decades to come.
Envisioning the New Facility
This fly-through offers an early vision of what Reed’s planned multidisciplinary sciences building could become. The rendering is conceptual and is not intended to represent the final design, architecture, materials, landscaping, or configuration of the building and surrounding spaces. Instead, it is an imaginative exploration of the possibilities—a way to envision how a new multidisciplinary sciences building could support collaboration, discovery, teaching, and research while creating dynamic spaces for Reed students, faculty, staff, and the broader campus community. As planning and design continue, the building will evolve through a thoughtful process shaped by Reed’s academic priorities, campus context, and community input.
What the New Facility Will Enable
The new multidisciplinary sciences facility will
- expand research and teaching capacity for biology, chemistry, computer science, neuroscience, physics, psychology, and statistics, among others;
- create flexible laboratories, studios, and shared spaces designed for multidisciplinary teaching, research, and collaboration across the curriculum;
- help students connect theory with experimentation, computation, data, and discovery;
- increase the accessibility and visibility of Reed’s science programs and make scientific opportunities available to more students;
- provide a permanent home for Reed’s Science Outreach Program and strengthen partnerships with local public schools;
- give Reed’s research-active faculty and students the facilities they need to pursue ambitious questions together.
My time at Reed has been academically challenging, pushing me to explore many different areas of study, from chemistry to philosophy.
— Julianna Namikas ’26
Learn More
Explore our three core priority areas that are shaping Reed's future.
Defining moments from students and alumni that showcase the value of a Reed education.
Hear stories from donors who are meeting the moment for current and future Reedies.
