The Stephenson Life Sciences Research Center Protein Production Core Facility project on the University of Oklahoma Research Campus and two universitywide information technology items are among topics to be discussed by the OU Board of Regents at its regular meeting Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 19-20, in Lawton.

The meeting will begin at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday in the McMahon Centennial Complex at Cameron University, 2800 West Gore Blvd., in Lawton, with items submitted by OU. The meeting will continue at 10 a.m. Thursday in the same location with items submitted by Rogers State University and then Cameron University.

OU was awarded a five-year, $9.7 million National Institutes of Health grant to establish a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence in Structural Biology in the Stephenson Life Sciences Research Center, the goal of which is to increase the pace, competitiveness and success rate of structural biology research in Oklahoma. The OU Regents will be asked to approve the Protein Production Core Facility project, which involves reconfiguration of an existing “two-module” laboratory area. The reconfiguration will result in a secure stand-alone laboratory with central hallway access. The facility will aid Norman campus and Health Sciences Center researchers studying important biological macromolecules – in particular, proteins or nucleic acids that are promising targets for rational drug design for treatment of human diseases and conditions associated with aging, osteoporosis, diabetes, and bacterial and parasitic infections.

Also during the September meeting, the OU Regents will consider two items for OU’s Information Technology Shared Services: a data center enterprise file storage solution and a network intrusion detection system.

The proposed Enterprise File Storage Solution is sought to standardize, refresh and expand OU IT’s file-based storage solutions. Housed in the data centers on the university’s Norman and Oklahoma City campuses, it would replicate data between sites for higher levels of data protection and disaster recovery and support a wide portfolio of enterprise and departmental applications, including academic, administrative, research and patient care.

The proposed high-performance, robust Data Center Network Intrusion Detection System would allow for the inspection of inbound and outbound network data traffic for all university data centers as part of a comprehensive data security strategy.

The next meeting of the OU Board of Regents is currently scheduled Oct. 24 and 25 in Tulsa and Claremore.