Officials broke ground today on the Adam Kennedy Forensics Field, a five-acre patch of land north of Tampa.
Forensic experts and law enforcement officers hope to turn the center into the world's biggest of its kind, enabling researchers to study facets of decomposition, including how the environment, weather and other factors affect the body.
Four bodies will be buried in the coming days. Next January, professors at USF will exhume them and lead detectives through a course of study.
The facility is named after a school principal who died in a car crash; His body is among the first to be buried.