UMN professors say they need $6M to continue important work

Critical research on Minnesota's aquatic pests and food supply is being conducted in a century-old tractor garage and a condemned workshop on the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus.

The school's bee laboratory is lodged in a small, unfinished cinder block structure tucked away on a muddy road on the northwest edge of the campus.

The Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center is studying ways to control carp and zebra mussels with Rube Goldberg-like contraptions housed in the tractor garage built in 1911.

Both labs are headed by world-renowned researchers: Marla Spivak at the bee lab and Peter Sorensen at the invasive species lab.

"They put the best minds to work on two very problematic issues in a garage and a shed!" an incredulous Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul, said last week.

University officials are asking lawmakers to help them remedy that situation this year. They have requested $6 million from the state to help pay for a $6 million upgrade at the invasive species lab and a new, $3 million bee lab. (The U would pay the remaining $3 million of the projects' costs.)

Those two labs are small fish in the U's application for $232.7 million from this year's state bonding bill for public works projects. Yet they are examples of the challenges faced by many projects vying for state money.

Hausman, chairwoman of the House Capital Investments Committee, is championing the labs, saying she would include them in the bonding bill she plans to introduce this month.

Gov. Mark Dayton recommended allocating money for the two projects in his $986 million bonding proposal.

And Hausman's Senate counterpart, Capital Investment Committee Chairman Sen. LeRoy Stumpf, DFL-Plummer, said both labs "should be funded."

Original post:
UMN professors say they need $6M to continue important work