The University of Michigan has announced a $7.5 million gift from alumni Robert and Ann Aikens to advance research and support the creation of a new hybrid operating room at its Frankel Cardiovascular Center. 

The gift, part of the university's $4 billion Victors for Michigan capital campaign, will establish a hybrid operating room -- the university's third -- in which catheter-based interventions, simultaneous imaging, and open chest surgeries can be performed in the same room. Hybrid operating rooms enable the minimally invasive repair of heart valves and treatment of arrhythmias, aortic aneurysms, and coronary arteries, allowing patients, especially elderly patients, to recover more quickly.

The University of Michigan Health System will match the couple's gift for the facility, which is scheduled to open in 2015.

Robert Aikens, a 1954 graduate of the university's Law School, is chairman of Robert B. Aikens & Associates LLC, a Detroit-based commercial real estate development and management firm. In 2002, Ann Aikens earned a bachelor of fine arts from the university's Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design. The Robert B. Aikens Commons was named in recognition of the Aikens' gifts to the law school.

"The newest hybrid O.R. will serve as an anchoring element in our pursuit of the most innovative cardiovascular techniques," said Stanley J. Chetcuti, director of the university's cardiac catheterization labs and the Eric J. Topol Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine. "We are pursuing these innovations to bring cures closer to patients in a culture of collaboration and caring."