| Readying
for lift-off |
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|
Rebecca
Arrington
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| Engineering
student Jeff Dawson, team leader of UVa.'s infrared sensing
experiment that will be used by NASA, completes the wiring for
part of the payload that will gather atmospheric data See
Undergraduate
engineers launch real-world NASA project. |
Matthews
family gives $500,000
Staff
Report
The
family of the late John W. Matthews, a former postdoctoral researcher
at the University of Virginia and a groundbreaking materials researcher,
has pledged $500,000 in his memory to the School of Engineering
and Applied Science. Matthews, whose son is the rock music composer
and performer Dave Matthews, was an IBM Corporation research scientist
who had a long-term research affiliation with the Engineering School.
The
gift will support the construction of a 1,000-square-foot laboratory
in the planned materials science building, a research and teaching
facility to be constructed in 2002. The building also will house
conference rooms and faculty offices, and will connect the Materials
Science and Chemical Engineering buildings.
Matthews'
relationship with the University began in 1964 when he came to U.Va.
as a postdoctoral researcher working with Doris Kuhlmann-Wilsdorf,
University Professor of Applied Science. She was married to the
late Heinz Wilsdorf, first chair of the Engineering School's department
of materials science. Matthews had already distinguished himself
by conducting promising research in epitaxy, an area that underlies
much of modern computer technology. Fifteen years earlier, as a
freshman at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg,
South Africa, Matthews was the top student in the first class taught
by Kuhlmann-Wilsdorf.
Matthews
later guided William A. Jesser, now chair of the U.Va. Department
of Materials Science, in his Ph.D. research on epitaxy, thereby
establishing this important research area at the University. Matthews'
many contributions are still fundamental to computer chip manufacture.
Full story.
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Knight-Ridder/Tribune
Photo Service
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| The
letters superimposed across the face of Dr. Francis Collins,
a U.Va. alumnus who heads the Human Genome Project, represent
the base pairs from the gene that controls cystic fibrosis,
one of his earlier discoveries. |
Human Genome Project leader will
be graduation speaker
By
Robert Brickhouse
Dr.
Francis S. Collins, the physician-geneticist who heads the international
Human Genome Project, will be the commencement speaker at the University's
Final Exercises on May 20.
A 1970
graduate of the University and director of the National Institutes
of Health's National Human Genome Research Institute, Collins oversees
the 13-year, publicly funded research effort to map and sequence
all of the human DNA genetic code, a project that has been called
the most important scientific undertaking of our era. Its aim is
to help understand the basis of genetic diseases and gain insight
into human evolution.
Raised
on a small farm near Staunton and home-schooled until the sixth
grade, Collins entered U.Va. at age 16 and received his undergraduate
degree in chemistry. He went on to take his Ph.D. in chemistry
at Yale and then, sensing that a revolution was under way in molecular
biology and genetics, enrolled in medical school at the University
of North Carolina.
Working
in medical genetics and identification of disease genes, he joined
the faculty at the University of Michigan in 1984. His ideas and
approaches contributed to the development of powerful scientific
tools for identifying genetic abnormalities. Full
story.
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