Get the gold shovels: Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center was set to hold a groundbreaking ceremony this morning on the LSU Medical Education and Innovation Center on Brittany Drive, near the OLOL campus. The training facility is one component of a public-private collaboration between the state, OLOL and LSU to move all Baton Rouge-based medical education to the OLOL campus by November 2013. The four-story, 41,000-square-foot building will include classroom space, simulation and research labs, and faculty offices. Gov. Bobby Jindal is among those slated to speak at the groundbreaking. See a rendering of the center and learn more about the project here.
Getting served: Piccadilly Restaurants has scheduled a pair of open house dinners for businesses in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans areas as the Baton Rouge-based restaurant chain attempts to expand its food service division. Of the approximately 70 food service contracts Piccadilly has landed in recent years at businesses, schools and hospitals, about 25 are in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The Baton Rouge open house will be held on Thursday, Aug. 2, from 6 to 8 p.m. at 3332 South Sherwood Forest Blvd. Interested companies can meet Piccadilly chefs and executives, see a demonstration, ask questions and get a taste of the food. For more information, click here.
He’s in the best selling show: Keith Comeaux, a Baton Rouge native who works at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is supporting the upcoming Mars Curiosity Rover landing scheduled for Aug. 5. As the rover approaches Mars following a nearly nine-month, 354 million-mile journey, Comeaux is serving as team chief for Cruise/Engineering Operations and will serve as flight director during the landing. Prior to the rover’s launch from Cape Canaveral in November 2011, Comeaux also led the test team responsible for ensuring that all of its systems were working properly. Read more about the rover’s tricky descent in a story from The Houston Chronicle here.
