The Children’s Research Institute (CRI) is located on the St. Petersburg campus of the University of South Florida (USF), east of All Children’s Hospital, on land donated by the City of St. Petersburg. The CRI came about through a $6 million gift from the All Children’s Hospital Foundation to the USF Foundation, which qualified the project for State of Florida matching funds. The CRI consists of 48,000 square feet that includes in excess of 35,000 square feet of laboratories, faculty offices and support space. CRI laboratories house the research programs of the holders of endowed chairs in immunology, cardiology, neonatology and other subspecialties, which have been developed through the All Children’s Hospital Foundation, the Pamela and Leslie Muma Endowment, and other donors to the USF Research Foundation.

The facility consists of modern and flexible research space that supports a wide range of research projects funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, All Children’s Hospital Foundation Institutional Grant Program, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies. The facility and these programs provide a state-of-the-art, interactive and collegial training environment for undergraduate, graduate and professional students; medical residents; postdoctoral fellows and fellowship trainees in pediatric subspecialties. Instrumentation capabilities include advanced flow cytometry, high throughput DNA sequencing, high performance liquid chromatography, in vitro and in vivo imaging systems, laser capture and confocal microscopy and surface plasmon resonance biomolecular spectrophotometry. In addition to an adjacent USF vivarium, the CRI houses a zebrafish facility and a fully equipped BSL-3 laboratory.