In the News: New Digs for BioE
Planned bioengineering/genomics building seen as part of Seattle bioscience renaissance
- Rep. Norm Dicks, Acting UW President Lee Huntsman, Dean of Engineering Denice Denton and Sen. Patty Murray let their shovels do the talking at the groundbreaking for the $150 million Bioengineeing/Genome Sciences Building.
Nearly a thousand people joined University of Washington leaders and state and national officials at the UW this summer to break ground on a new home for the schools nationally ranked Department of Bioengineering.
“Bioengineering at the University of Washington is internationally recognized as one of the best in the world, in both education and research,” said Department Chair Yongmin Kim. “Many people believe that bioengineering is the engineering of the 21st century. I certainly believe this.”
He added that the new facility will not only help consolidate bioengineering researchers who are spread out in nine different buildings across campus, but will give them 30 percent more research space and twice the teaching space. That will allow the department to increase graduate student slots by 20 percent and double its number of undergraduates.
Denice Denton, dean of the College of Engineering, said the new facility is yet another factor helping to establish Seattle as one of the world’s premier centers for bioscience. The area already boasts a strong industry presence in the field. Almost two years ago, the National Institutes of Health solicited proposals under a new program to award national Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science. Two of the three awarded that year were at the UW. One, the Microscale Life Sciences Center, was established in engineering. And in September, philanthropist Paul Allen announced that he would give $100 million to establish an independent institute to study the brain.
- A rendering of the planned Bioengineeing/Genome Sciences Building.
“Our people, through groundbreaking research and collaboration, will be a key part of this thrust,” Denton said.
The building, which will be shared with the Department of Genome Sciences, is scheduled to open in 2005.
Stories about the new facility, funded in large part with a $70 million gift from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have run in the national media. The balance of the money for the project includes $50 million in revenue bonds, $12 million in federal funds, $10 million from the Whitaker Foundation and gifts from private donors.
View additional photos from the groundbreaking and see construction photos.
Denton helps lead charge for diversity following Supreme Court ruling
Dean of Engineering Denice Denton and a group of other deans at the University of Washington are speaking out to support change in a Washington State law that bans the use of race as a factor in college admissions.
The campaign comes in the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case Grutter v. Bollinger, which involved the University of Michigan law school and in which the court ruled that race could be one factor among many in deciding admissions. Denton organized other deans at the UW and together they drafted an op-ed piece on the subject, calling for change in the interest of better education. The op-ed ran July 1 in the Seattle Times. Denton has appeared on talk radio to advocate the view that diverse groups make for better learning, and was interviewed for stories that appeared in USA Today and on the national Associated Press wire. She plans to continue to press the issue, working with state legislators in the coming year to change a law that she considers unenlightened as well as detrimental to quality education.
DO-IT gets a chance to show how it’s done
Leaders and scholars in a UW-based program designed to connect teens who have disabilities, get them interested in math and science and teach them how to be successful in college and the career field had a chance to highlight their efforts over the summer. Started about a decade ago by Sheryl Burgstahler, assistant director in computing and communications at the UW, DO-IT has attracted national acclaim for a program that has graduated more than 200 teenagers and obtained National Science Foundation funding to expand.