News you can use

Albert Chambers, former Ford Motor Company director of strategic issues and a former NBC news manager, has joined the U of C as the vice president for university relations. He will guide the development and implementation of communication strategies, working closely with the news and publications offices.

Faith in humanities

Trustee Richard Franke, a 1997 National Humanities medalist, and his wife, Barbara, recently gave $2.5 million to the Chicago Humanities Institute, now named the Franke Institute for the Humanities. The Frankes have donated in the past to the institute as well as to the Court Theatre and the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art.

Grand totals

In 1997-98, faculty and researchers at the University received 1,459 grants and contracts, reaching a record total of $219.3 million. Grants included a $3.5 million award from NASA to support efforts to design a camera for stratospheric observation and $2 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a multi-city study on children, families, and welfare reform.

At the top of their fields

The University has awarded distinguished service professorships to Elizabeth Helsinger, English; Robert Rosner, astronomy & astrophysics; and Robert Townsend, economics. Joining the faculty as named professors are Alexander Beilinson, mathematics, and Elliott Gershon, psychiatry. Pathologist Jeffrey Bluestone, sociologist Anthony Bryk, physicist Jeffrey Harvey, and archaeologist Alan Kolata have also received named professorships.

A matter of biology

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has awarded the College a grant of $1.6 million to help its biological-sciences division design biology courses for non-science concentrators and to increase the number of environmental-science courses offered at the College. Annually awarded to select institutions through a competitive process, the funding will be distributed over the course of four years.

Asia's academic accolade

The Academia Sinica of Taiwan, the East Asian equivalent of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, recently elected Anthony C. Yu, PhD'69, the Carl Darling Buck distinguished service professor of humanities, to membership in the society. Of the Academia Sinica's 200 members, four others belong to the U of C faculty.

The doctor is in

Harvey M. Golomb, AB'64, professor of medicine and section chief of hematology and oncology at the U of C Medical Center, has been appointed chair of the center's department of medicine. The recipient of numerous medical awards, Golomb has written some 350 peer-reviewed articles and nearly 300 scientific abstracts.

High energy

The U.S. Department of Energy has notified the University that it plans to negotiate an extension of the University's contract for managing and operating Argonne National Laboratory. The current, performance-based contract runs through September 30, 1999. The new contract would extend the agreement an additional five years and is expected to provide approximately $2.2 billion in funding for basic and applied research.

Off the charts

Scientists at the University's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center plan to use their new four-year, $7.2 million National Science Foundation grant for "off-the-road-map" research, meaning long-term, high-risk work with a potentially very high payoff. The center's scientists are studying chemical synthesis, non-scale materials design, the quantum properties of exotic materials, the properties of interfaces as thin as a molecule, and the flow behavior of granular materials and liquids. .