ConocoPhillips donates to CU building

BOULDER – Houston-based energy firm ConocoPhillips Co. plans to give $3.5 million to the new Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building for a wing to house the University of Colorado’s department of chemical and biological engineering.

ConocoPhillips plans to follow up a $1 million cash gift made in January with planned future gifts of $2.5 million over the next two years, the CU Foundation said in a statement.

The Chemical and Biological Engineering department will be one of three-CU-Boulder departments to occupy the new 330,000-square-foot building on the east campus. The other two will be the Division of Biochemistry and the Colorado Initiative in Molecular Biotechnology, or CIMB, the CU Foundation said.

“The Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building creates a Front Range anchor for the biosciences with the help of partners like ConocoPhillips,” CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano, said in the statement. “With interdisciplinary research, the possibilities for energy innovation are limitless, and ConocoPhillips is providing the foundation for this vital work.”

The gifts will name the ConocoPhillips Center for Energy Innovation, the CU Foundation said. The plan also is to bring two CU-Boulder research programs that ConocoPhillips currently supports under one roof – the Colorado Center for Biorefining and Biofuels, or C2B2, and the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, or RASEI. ConocoPhillips currently sponsors more than $2 million in CU-Boulder faculty research contracts for 2011-13.

With the latest gifts, close to $40 million in private support has been raised for the building. Construction is being funded by a variety of private and public sources, including a $15 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant from the federal government.

The building is expected to open next year. Other partners include the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In all, it is slated to house 60 faculty, 500 graduate students and research associates, and undergraduate students.

Faculty at CU-Boulder’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering have been awarded more than $25 million in research grants in the past two years. ConocoPhillips has about 29,700 employees, $156 billion in assets and $189 billion in revenue.

ConocoPhillips also is planning a research and educational park in Louisville.

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