Lehman leads CU group to Israel-Jordan science project unveiling

A computer image of the planned Bridging the Rift complex on the Israel-Jordan border. The site, a symbol of unity, will be ringed by olive trees, evoking the peaceful cooperation among scholars and scientists that will take place there. Mustafa Abadan and TJ Gottesdiener, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

Lehman

By David Brand

President Jeffrey S. Lehman will lead a Cornell delegation to a historic groundbreaking ceremony March 9 for a major life sciences research center 43 miles south of the Dead Sea, on the border between Israel and Jordan.

The facility, called the Bridging the Rift (BTR) Center, will rise over the next five years on a 150-acre site donated equally by each country, with the world's first databank of information about all living systems as its centerpiece.

The databank will be the core of the Library of Life, a research and education center to be developed jointly by Cornell and Stanford University scientists, who will undertake the monumental task of gathering, organizing and modeling information to quantify and characterize all living systems. The databank, yet to be developed, will assemble information on living systems, from microbes to plants to animals, using digital images and global positioning data. Information also will flow from ecological and environmental investigations, molecular research and DNA sequencing.

The research center, located in an area known as central Arava on the Israeli side and Wadi Araba on the Jordanian side, will develop computer modeling systems to make predictions at genetic levels and to help understand coevolution of species and the ways in which ecology affects DNA, and the reverse. Both Cornell and Stanford will offer doctoral degrees at the BTR Center.

Said Lehman: "This project is an enormous undertaking, one that will require the collaboration of scientists from every corner of the world. We are grateful that the governments of Israel and Jordan have taken the first steps to show how this collaboration can evolve. This is a unique scientific environment, the perfect place to begin the project."

Because the new databank will gather a hugely diverse amount of information about living systems, it will be a major advancement over GenBank, the database operated by the National Institutes of Health in the United States. GenBank, which stores genetic sequences, is part of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, which also includes the DNA DataBank of Japan and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

The Library of Life was proposed by Steven Tanksley, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of plant breeding at Cornell, who will be a key adviser on the project. The library's director will be Ron Elber, professor of computer science at Cornell. The early work of the library will be to develop a prototype, the Library of the Desert, which will be a digital catalog that includes living samples of microbes, fungi, plants, insects, invertebrates and vertebrates in the Dead Sea region. New computer languages and databases will be created to integrate the massive amounts of data flowing into the library.

The Bridging the Rift Center site is 43 miles south of the Dead Sea, on the border between Israel and Jordan. Karen Walters

The BTR Foundation, which is providing seed money for the BTR Center, is headed by New York City businessman Mati Kochavi, a native of Israel who is chairman of Optic Solutions. "This center is the first of its kind in the Middle East -- a hub for technology, research and education for all people in Middle Eastern countries, and initially Jordan and Israel," Kochavi said.

Tanksley

Elber

Kochavi

This is Cornell's second teaching and research initiative in the Middle East. Last year, the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City opened a campus in Qatar, the first higher education institution in that country to be coeducational. Cornell is the first American university to offer its M.D. degree overseas.

Attending the groundbreaking with Lehman will be his wife, Kathy Okun; Francille Firebaugh, vice president for land grant affairs; Robert Constable, dean for computing and information science; Susan Henry, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS); Ronnie Coffman, professor and chair of the Department of Plant Breeding; Klara Kedem, professor of computer science; James Mingle, university counsel; and James Haldeman, director of International Programs in CALS and the Cornell liaison with the BTR Foundation.

Also attending will be Marc Feldman, director of the Stanford's Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies.

The participants will begin groundbreaking day with breakfast at the Jerusalem home of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. After the ceremony on the Israel-Jordan border, at which a cornerstone will be laid, the participants will travel to Amman, where His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan will host a gala event at the Royal Court.

King Abdullah has called the Bridging the Rift initiative "bigger than Jordan and Israel." Sharon has said, "This is of first-rank strategic importance."