Chicago Journal ::

$1.4 billion—and gaining
On January 11 the Chicago Initiative, the University’s $2 billion fund-raising campaign, passed the $1.4 billion mark. Launched in spring 2002, the Initiative has aimed its sights on investment in human capital: funds for faculty research, undergraduate and graduate student support, and community programs.

Cosmic prize
The National Science Foundation awarded University cosmochemist Robert Clayton a 2004 National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest scientific honor. Clayton, who studies the origins of Earth and other planets, was one of eight recipients. His research has bolstered the theory that the moon was once part of Earth, helped identify the first lunar meteorite, and showed that Mars probably once contained water but did not support life.

Hospital additions
The University Hospitals has chosen Cannon Design and Rafael Vinoly, the architectural mind behind the Graduate School of Business, to design a new hospital pavilion. The $500 million expansion, as currently imagined, would add about 500,000 square feet of space and increase the Hospitals’ clinical capacity by more than a third.

Pan-scientific studies
The University received a three-year, $1 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to underwrite a new graduate program in biophysical dynamics and self-organization. Students will learn techniques from the biological, physical, and computer sciences, training them for the growing cross-collaboration among those disciplines.

Goldwasser hits gold
Eugene Goldwasser, PhD’50, a biochemistry professor emeritus, received Thailand’s 2005 Prince Mahidol Award for his key role in purifying and characterizing erythropoietin, a hormone that stimulates red-blood-cell production. His work has prevented tens of thousands of deaths from tainted blood transfusions. The award includes a medal, a certificate, and a $50,000 prize.

Partner for Argonne bid
The University has teamed with BWX Technologies Inc. (BWXT) to bid on the contract to manage and operate the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory—a contract Chicago has held since Argonne opened in 1946. Under the arrangement, BWXT will provide nuclear-operations capabilities and resources to support the University’s scientific and management missions. The U of C also has recruited Northwestern and the University of Illinois as scientific partners. Chicago’s current DOE contract ends September 30. A final decision is expected before that date.

Alumni honor
Political scientist James Q. Wilson, AM’57, PhD’59, will be awarded the University’s Alumni Medal at June’s Alumni Weekend. Wilson, winner of the 2003 Presidential Medal of Freedom, cofounded The Public Interest, a journal examining government policies, and cowrote American Government (Houghton Mifflin), a standard text on university campuses. His “broken windows” proposal for crime reduction, stressing community-based foot patrols and enforcement of nuisance violations, was credited with greatly decreasing New York City crime in the 1990s.

Globus thinking
The National Science Foundation has given a five-year, $13.3 million grant to sustain and further develop the Globus Toolkit, a software package used by many science projects and companies, including the U.S. TeraGrid and the Network for Earthquake Engineering and Simulation. Globus founders Ian Foster, the Holly Compton distinguished service professor of computer science, and Carl Kesselman, of the University of Southern California’s Information Science Institute, will lead the undertaking.

Saving pays off
Richard Thaler won the TIAA-CREF 2005 Paul A. Samuelson (AB’35) Award for outstanding scholarly writing on lifelong financial security, becoming the fourth current or former GSB faculty member to get the award since its establishment in 2000. Thaler, director of the GSB’s Center for Decision Research, won for his paper “Save for Tomorrow: Using Behavioral Economics to Increase Employee Saving,” published in the February 2004 Journal of Political Economy.