Murdock to buy more equipment for N.C. Research Campus

California financier David Murdock is purchasing microscopes and biological-imaging systems for the core laboratory at the N.C. Research Campus being developed in Kannapolis.

Carl Zeiss MicroImaging Inc. has signed on to provide the campus with what the company calls one of the most advanced microscope and imaging systems in the world.

The deal is valued at almost $5 million.

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"The high contrast and high resolution of these microscopes is fantastic, especially the new state-of-the-art confocal microscopes which will allow us to see three-dimensional images so clearly that ideas and processes we could not fully understand up to this point will be obvious," says Steve Leath, vice president of research at the UNC System.

Last year, Murdock announced he was buying a $900,000, one-of-a-kind nuclear magnetic-resonance imager for the campus, which will allow researchers to stretch and magnify molecules for close study.

Murdock is establishing the N.C. Research Campus at the site of the former Pillowtex Corp. headquarters and manufacturing site. It is envisioned as a 350-acre life-sciences hub involving Murdock, Duke University, the UNC System, the N.C. Community College System and other institutions of higher education as well as several corporations.

Carl Zeiss MicroImaging markets microscopy systems for research, laboratories and industrial applications. It is a subsidiary of Carl Zeiss Inc., whose North American headquarters is in Thornwood, N.Y. The parent company is based in Germany.