The University of Southern Mississippi's USM Foundation recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for the Quinlan-Hammond Hall of Honor. The building, named for lead benefactor and USM alumnus Joe Quinlan and the center’s founding director, Maj. Gen. Jeff Hammond, is set to be complete by fall 2021.

Located at the corner of 35th Avenue and Pearl Street on USM's Hattiesburg campus, Quinlan-Hammond will house the university's Center for Military Veterans, Service Members and Families, which is currently housed in a 1,600-square-foot refurbished building on the west side of the campus.

The center has outgrown its current space, a release from USM says. The new building will be a 5,200-square-foot facility with a conference room, study space for small groups or individual work, a lounge and study, meeting areas and staff office space.

One hundred ten USM alumni and friends collectively contributed more than $2.8 million for the building's construction. Any funds raised over the construction and furnishing costs will go toward creating an endowment to provide support for the center, the release says.

For more information, visit visit usmfoundation.com/veteran or usmfoundation.com.

MSU Holds Ribbon Cutting for New Poultry Science Building

Mississippi State University held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to commemorate the completion of its new Poultry Science Building on Monday, Nov. 9.

The new 27,300-square-foot building is connected to the 34,500-square-foot Animal and Dairy Sciences Building, which opened in fall 2019. Both are part of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences complex, which also includes the 15,000-square-foot Meat Science and Muscle Biology Laboratory that MSU completed in fall 2018.

MSU's Poultry Science Building includes two classrooms, faculty offices, a conference room and a graduate assistant suite. The building houses 10 research and teaching laboratories, including the Dr. Elbert and Anne Day Teaching Laboratory, which is for classes with hands-on lab components. The building has two labs dedicated to physiology, a five-room nutrition suite, a three-room microbiology/cell culture suite, a molecular lab and a dedicated lab for poultry products.

For more information on MSU’s Department of Poultry Science, visit poultry.msstate.edu.

UM Hosting Oxford Science Cafe on COVID-19

University of Mississippi faculty researchers will host a virtual Oxford Science Cafe on the infection process of COVID-19 on Tuesday, Nov. 17. UM will conduct the event via Zoom beginning at 7 p.m.

Joshua Sharp, associate professor of pharmacology and director of the UM Glycoscience Center of Research Excellence, will hold a discussion titled “COVID-19 and Heparan Sulfate: The Carbohydrate Handle that SARS-CoV-2 Uses to Grab Your Cells.”

The 45-minute webcast will cover topics such as where COVID-19 infections usually start in the body and how SARS-CoV-2 find and enter target cells, a release from UM says.

To view the Oxford Science Cafe, visit https://olemiss.zoom.us/j/95192915706?pwd=Ris0MjNKQ2lkRlRaYlpXMHNsREx4Zz09.