Chicago Journal ::

University secures Argonne bid

After a multimillion dollar, congressionally mandated bidding process, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced in late July that the University of Chicago would continue to manage and operate Argonne National Laboratory starting October 1. The $2.5 billion, five-year contract, which the DOE can extend for up to 20 years, calls for a new University-run corporate team, UChicago Argonne LLC, to manage the facility. The company promised improvements in safety, project management, information technology, and staff retention.

Web sites win challenge

Two Web sites tied for first place in the Graduate School of Business’s tenth annual Edward L. Kaplan, MBA’71, New Venture Challenge, a competition that encourages entrepreneurship. The two winners, Grubhub.com and Collectica.com, beat out 64 student businesses to split $50,000 in prize money. Grubhub.com offers free searches of restaurants that deliver in a user’s area, and Collectica.com is a resource for collectors.

Rewards for DNA repair

Chuan He, assistant professor in chemistry and the College, has received a $500,000 National Science Foundation award to support his study of the interactions between DNA and the body’s repair proteins, which protect damaged DNA from developing into cancer. He also received a $75,000 Teacher-Scholar Award from the New York–based Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation.

Ramping up accessibility

Campus access for those with disabilities will be improved by 2010, following a 2004 Justice Department review citing violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The July out-of-court settlement calls for equipping all campus buildings with ramps and signs, enforcing a campus-wide emergency evacuation plan for people with disabilities, and posting accessible routes on the University Web site.

Fama’s financial gains

Eugene F. Fama, MBA’63, PhD’64, the Robert R. McCormick distinguished service professor of finance at the GSB, received the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute’s Nicholas Molodovsky Award for his contributions to portfolio theory and asset pricing. Fama joins past recipients such as Carnegie Corporation vice chair Martin L. Leibowitz, AB‘55, SM’56; Harvard University Business School professor and Nobel Laureate Robert C. Merton; and the late Nobel laureate and GSB finance professor Merton Miller, with whom Fama coauthored The Theory of Finance (1972).

New trustees with U of C pasts

In June the University tapped four corporate leaders to join its Board of Trustees. Rodney Goldstein, who chairs the investment firm Frontenac Company, is a U of C Medical Center trustee and headed the volunteer committee for constructing Comer Children’s Hospital. Water Saver Faucet Company president Steven Kersten, JD’80, has volunteered with the Chicago Initiative fund-raising campaign and two Law School reunion committees. Capital Research Company senior vice president Gregory Wendt, AB’83, chairs the Make-A-Wish Foundation in San Francisco and volunteers for the University’s Alumni Schools Committee. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., president Jon Winkelried, AB‘81, MBA’82, has also volunteered for the Alumni Schools Committee.

Child-care options expand

University employees will have more choices for child care thanks to a $400,000 grant from the University and Hospitals to expand three South Side day-care centers, creating 70 new openings at North Kenwood’s Centers for New Horizons and Hyde Park’s Chicago Child Care Society and Baby Ph.D. Spurred in part by a 2002 employee survey indicating few available options for infants, the grant will fund improved playground equipment, classroom renovations, and additional personnel. Approximately half the employee-dedicated slots will be available this fall, with the remaining openings added through early 2007.

Provost to step down

After serving five years as University provost, Richard P. Saller, also the Edward L. Ryerson distinguished service professor of history and classics, will return to teaching in January 2007. As provost Saller addressed campus-diversity issues, creating a deputy-provost position for research and minority issues; oversaw campus expansion projects; and promoted the University’s Urban Education Initiative, which operates charter schools and other community programs. President Robert J. Zimmer has begun a search for Saller’s successor.

Center of diversity

The Office of Minority Student Affairs (OMSA), the Amandla Center, and a Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered Queer resource center will soon have a new home. Chicago firm Urban Works Architects heads the renovation at 5710 South Woodlawn Avenue, which will unite under one roof the Harper-based Amandla Center, a student lounge and space for OMSA programming, with the Administration Building–based OMSA office, the administrative wing for minority affairs. Construction is scheduled to begin this winter, and the groups hope to open their doors with the 2007–08 academic year.

Shift in science management

Jan-Marino Ramirez, professor of organismal biology & anatomy, is now department chair, succeeding paleontologist and Field Museum provost Neil Shubin. In ecology & evolution, professor Joy Bergelson moved up as her department’s chair, replacing professor Chung-I Wu. Meanwhile former Harvard and University of Cincinnati gastrointestinal surgeon Jeffrey Matthews took over as chair of surgery, succeeding Bruce Gewertz, who moved to Los Angeles’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Old society, new members

The American Philosophical Society honored statistics chair Stephen Stigler, U-High’59, meteorologist William Hooke, SM’66, PhD’67, and biochemist Lubert Stryer, SB’57, with memberships in the nation’s oldest scholarly society. The Ernest DeWitt Burton distinguished service professor in statistics and the College, Stigler has written two books on the field’s history. Hooke directs the American Meteorological Society’s policy program, while Stryer, a professor emeritus in medicine at Stanford University, wrote a standard biochemistry text and developed new approaches to studying biomolecules and cells.