ARLINGTON , Va. , Nov. 17, 2003 -- Five universities will share $17 million in The Whitaker Foundation's final round of Special Awards for building construction.

A $5 million grant will go to Purdue University. Awards of $3 million each will go to the University of Rochester; Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; the State University of New York, Stony Brook; and the University of Texas, Austin. These grants will help leverage other grants and gifts that could total $100 million.

Purdue will use the award to construct on its West Lafayette campus a new building that will be filled entirely by its Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Rochester will use its grant toward construction of a building with more than 50,000 net square feet, about half of which will contain Rochester's Department of Biomedical Engineering. The department, established in 2000, is still growing with help from a Whitaker Development Award.

The Rutgers grant will expand a planned facility from nearly 60,000 square feet to more than 80,000 square feet. The Department of Biomedical Engineering plans to move into the new building in 2005.

The grant to SUNY Stony Brook will be used with other funds for a new building to house its Department of Biomedical Engineering and research centers for biotechnology and sensor systems, leading to a new Center for Biomolecular Diagnosis and Therapeutics. The department, strategically located between the engineering and medical campuses, will occupy most of the building's approximately 60,000 gross square feet.

UT Austin's award will help build new, permanent housing on its main campus for a recently established Department of Biomedical Engineering. The department interacts closely with the University of Texas Health Science Center and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The new building will provide 48,000 square feet of usable space.

The five grants were made from applications in the final competition for Leadership-Development Awards. These awards have enabled 38 universities to establish biomedical engineering departments and enhanced dozens of other departments and programs across the United States. Five previous Special Awards were made for building construction.