KANNAPOLIS, N.C. -- When researchers from around the world meet next week at a conference related to creating healthier food, they'll also be introduced to the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis.

The campus, which is scheduled to open some time next year, will be looking for top scientists to research biotechnology products and processes that could lead to better health.

"It's our first start at letting people know that we exist and we're looking," said Dr. Steven Zeisel, director of the Nutrition Research Institute in Kannapolis, which is part of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

While most of the metabolomics and nutrigenomics conference will be held on the UNC

Charlotte campus, organizers plan to take participants on a tour of the site for the research campus in nearby Kannapolis. And Zeisel will moderate a panel discussion on choosing pathways for the research campus.

"It will help us meet scientists from around the world," Zeisel said of the conference. "There are a lot of people who want to know what's going on down here."

Seven North Carolina universities will work together at the $1.5 billion campus to find answers to problems such as obesity, hunger and birth defects. Zeisel envisions a research center that could eventually compare to Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California or North Carolina's own Research Triangle Park.

The 350-acre biotech center is being built by David Murdock, president of Dole Food Co. It will sit on land that used to house the giant Cannon Mills Plant 1 complex.

Zeisel said it might be difficult to persuade scientists to leave their posts in bigger cities for Kannapolis, but he still thinks he has two powerful recruiting tools: money and high-tech instruments.

North Carolina's Legislature is providing $27 million for the campus over five years that will help pay for research. And Core Lab, which Duke University will manage, will feature new technology such as a powerful nuclear magnetic resonance imager.

"We are going to see things no one has seen before," Zeisel said.