University salutes donors to Duffield Hall with virtual naming ceremony

Duffield Hall donors David Duffield, right, and Dwight C. "Bill" Baum, center, were among those honored by President Hunter Rawlings and an audience at a luncheon and "naming ceremony" in the Biotechnology Building Oct. 3. Robert Barker/University Photography

By David Brand

Duffield Hall, Cornell's planned high-tech research facility, began its remaining three-year journey to completion Oct. 3 when President Hunter Rawlings and leading donors to the project held a virtual naming ceremony.

The occasion was a daylong symposium for donors, alumni, business leaders and state government officials to spotlight Duffield Hall (which will be a multidisciplinary research center on the Engineering Quad), Cornell research in nanotechnology (the science of the very small) and economic development that could spring from this research.

Among the major donors present were alumni David Duffield '63, MBA '64, founder, president, chief executive and chairman of PeopleSoft, a developer of client/server business software, and Dwight C. "Bill" Baum '36, an investment banker at Paine Webber and owner of Dwight C. Baum Investments. Baum set the Duffield Hall project in motion by making the first significant gift. Then, in 1997, Duffield donated $20 million to the project.

Last week Duffield announced he was giving a further $7 million to the project, as a challenge grant.

Duffield Hall, the construction of which is slated to begin next spring if all approvals are obtained, is now projected to cost $62.5 million. The latest gift by Duffield could mean that the entire cost will be raised by the end of this year, said Marsha Pickens, assistant dean of the College of Engineering.

During the symposium, donors including Duffield, Baum and Frankie Knight, the widow of Lester B. Knight for whom Knight Laboratory, the home of the Cornell Nanofabrication Center (CNF), is named, were honored at a luncheon in the Biotechnology Building hosted by Rawlings. Baum, said Rawlings, is "a stalwart supporter of the College of Engineering, where a professorship is named in his honor, and of the university as a whole." And the president thanked Duffield for his "foresight and generosity, which will be recognized in the naming of Duffield Hall."

Shortly after, Brienne Shkedi, an undergraduate majoring in applied and engineering physics, entered in a clean lab "bunny suit" carrying a silver cannon. At an instruction from Rawlings, "let the names begin," Olympic theme music was played, the cannon was fired, distributing a wide swath of confetti, the lights flashed and images of Duffield Hall appeared on the screen. This "virtual naming" of Duffield Hall, said Rawlings, introduces "a new era of nanotechnology at Cornell."

The naming ceremony was preceded by a talk by Robert Frasca, of the firm of Zimmer Gunsel Frasca Partnership, and the principal designer of Duffield Hall. With him, Frasca brought a CD-ROM with a computer-generated virtual tour of the completed building.

The symposium, in Snee Hall, was opened by John Hopcroft, the Joseph Silbert Dean of the College of Engineering, and Robert Richardson, vice provost for research and the F.R. Newman Professor of Physics. Then, in brief presentations by researchers, Cornell's leadership in nanotechnology unfolded through research at CNF, in materials science and in biotechnology. Subjects addressed ranged from "Impact of MEMS on Communications Technology" to "Engineering Life Into Nanofabricated Devices" and "Nano-scale Systems for DNA Delivery."

Presenters included Clifford Pollock, the Ilda and Charles Lee Professor of Engineering and the faculty project leader on Duffield Hall; Yuri Suzuki, assistant professor of materials science; Michael Isaacson, associate dean for research at the College of Engineering and professor of applied and engineering physics; Mark Saltzman, professor of chemical engineering; J. Richard Shealy, professor of electrical and computer engineering; Carlo Montemagno, associate professor of agriculture and biological engineering; and Lois Pollack, assistant professor of applied and engineering physics.

In a final session, "Economic Development and Nanotechnology" was addressed by a panel moderated by Henrik N. Dullea, vice president for university relations. Panelists included Russell Bessette, M.D., who as executive director of the newly organized New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research (NYSTAR), is the state government's leading research official. Bessette described the major programs that NYSTAR will be funding this year: a $95 million capital facility program for the construction, reconstruction and renovation of facilities, to include equipment purchases; and a $7.5 million faculty development program to help retain and recruit leading research faculty. These two programs will be combined in five STAR centers (for strategically targeted academic research centers) across the state. Each STAR center will be focused in one area of research "depending on what is the best skill set identified by the applicants."

Applicants, Bessette noted, will be selected based on "peer-review, competitive science," and not on "pure pork-barrel distribution of funds." At the heart of this new funding agency, he said, is "the recognition of public and private universities as important economic engines." STAR center applications, he said, will be viewed both from the science perspective of outside reviewers and from the business perspective of an advisory council. "We have reduced this to a formula of good science plus good business equals wealth and opportunity for the citizens of our state," he said.

Other panelists were David M. Ahlers, chairman, Cayuga Venture Fund; R. Wayne Diesel, vice chancellor, business and industry relations, State University of New York; and Gregory A. Hulecki, senior partner, FA Technology Ventures.