In securing the $35 million Challenge Grant -- together with additional funding provided through the NYSUNY 2020 legislation approved by the state legislature in June -- UB will move ahead with plans to hire new faculty across the university, expand its academic offerings and facilities for all students and relocate the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

Specifically, the plan allows for UB to move forward with the first phases of a $375 million plan to relocate the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, where the school will be in close proximity to UB's other assets on the medical campus: a new Clinical and Translational Research Center and Educational Opportunity Center now under construction; the new UB Downtown Gateway (former M. Wile building); and the New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences

Next month, UB will begin contracting for design of a new medical school. Site selection is expected to be completed in the spring and building designs completed in April 2013. Construction is anticipated to begin in September 2013 and be completed in the fall of 2016.