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| Seen from Sage Hall, Duffield Hall shines out across the newly landscaped Pew Engineering Quad. This is a composite of two pictures, taken several months apart. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography |
By David Brand
Duffield Hall, Cornell's landmark, $58.5 million nanotechnology research and education building, nearly a decade in the making, will be dedicated Wednesday, Oct. 6. The dedication will be the highlight of a week of celebrations, events, lectures and workshops marking the founding of the Cornell NanoScale Facility (CNF) and nearly three decades of Cornell research, development and education in nanotechnology -- the world of very, very small things.
The public is invited to attend many of the events. For information contact Marsha Pickens, College of Engineering, 255-6094.
Duffield Hall, a modernistic structure clad in pewter-colored aluminum panels and overlooking the newly landscaped Joseph N. Pew Engineering Quadrangle, becomes the campus headquarters for one of the most productive and exciting fields in science and technology, a field in which Cornell has become a global leader. Nanotechnology uses biology, chemistry, materials and physical sciences and engineering to assemble materials and components atom by atom, or molecule by molecule, to produce new materials and devices, from stronger plastics to medical sensors.
The new building is among the world's foremost facilities for nanoscale science and technology instruction and research, and is one of the first centers wholly designed for interdisciplinary teaching and research in nanotechnology. Its most commanding feature is a series of three atriums running from Campus Avenue and connecting with Upson Hall on the southern edge of the Engineering Quad.
The building is named for Cornell alumnus David Duffield (B.E.E. '62, MBA '64), who contributed an initial $20 million to fund the construction.
The dedication ceremony will be at 8 p.m. Oct. 6 at a Grand Opening Event and Reception in the Duffield Hall atriums, presided over by Cornell President Jeffrey S. Lehman. During the ceremony, a presentation will be made to Lehman by NASA astronaut Daniel Barry, a 1975 Cornell alumnus. The event is open to the public, but tickets are required.
The Duffield Hall Grand Opening celebration will continue Thursday, Oct. 7, with research posters featuring CNF users in the Duffield atriums and, concurrently, beginning at 9 a.m., with talks by researchers in Phillips Hall, Room 29. At noon, in Barnes Auditorium, the closing address to the opening festivities will be given by Jeff Hawkins, a 1979 graduate, who is the inventor of the Palm Pilot and founder of the Redwood Neuroscience Institute. His subject will be "Passion in Science: How Great Achievements Are Made in Science and Technology."
Wednesday will begin with a 25th-anniversary celebration of the founding of CNF, a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded national user facility for nanotechnology research and microfabrication. CNF now is ensconced in its new Lester B. Knight Laboratory in Duffield, with its 16,000-square-foot clean room and an additional 30,000 square feet for related nanoscale research.
CNF has its origins in a 1977 grant from the NSF. The lab officially began as the National Research and Resource Facility for Submicron Structures, opening its doors on the fourth floor of Phillips Hall on the Engineering Quad. The facility later moved next door into a new facility, the Lester B. Knight Laboratory, and ultimately became CNF.
Wednesday's events will begin in Barnes Hall Auditorium at 8:40 a.m. with a keynote address by Roald Hoffmann, the Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters. His talk will be followed by remarks from Thomas Everhart, president emeritus, California Institute of Technology; Alec Broers, former vice chancellor, University of Cambridge and current president of the Royal Academy of Engineering; John Armstrong, retired IBM vice president for science and technology and director of research; Charles E. Sporck, a 1951 Cornell alumnus and former CEO, National Semiconductor Corp.; and Irwin Jacobs, a 1954 Cornell graduate and founder and CEO of Qualcomm Inc.
The keynote address at the afternoon session will be given by W. Kent Fuchs, the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering. He will be followed by several speakers, including David Auston, president, Kavli Foundation, and Edward Wolf, now an emeritus professor of electrical and computer engineering, who was the first director of the facility for submicron structures.
Three related events will round out Cornell's week devoted to nanotechnology:
From Oct. 3 to 5, the Kavli Institute at Cornell and the Cornell News Service will give media representatives a preview of Duffield Hall during a journalists' workshop, "Nanoscale Science Under the Microscope." Before they visit the new facility, the journalists will go through a primer, "Nanotech 101," presented by Cornell faculty members, to familiarize them with terminology, techniques and applications of nanotechnology. Hands-on laboratory experiences, tours and a keynote lecture by Nobel Laureate Horst Störmer, a professor at Columbia University, will be followed by two panel discussions: "Roles of Federal Government and Academia in Ensuring Environmental Safety" and "Roles of Academia and Media in Shaping Public Understanding of Nanoscale Science." The workshop is sponsored by the Kavli Foundation.
On Oct. 7 from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in Sage Hall, the Nanotechnology Club, a student group at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, is hosting its first Nanotechnology Symposium as part of the events associated with the opening of Duffield Hall. The symposium will explore the connections between science, private equity investment and entrepreneurship in nanotechnology. Tickets, $5 for students and $10 for non-students, can be purchased in Sage atrium or at http://www.epe.cornell.edu. The symposium will feature talks by industry entrepreneurial leaders, as well as a panel discussion with prominent nanotechnology venture capitalists. Professor of engineering Harold Craighead, a leading nanotechnology researcher, will introduce the event. Speakers will include Hawkins, Josh Wolfe, founder of Lux Capital, and Kevin McGovern, founder of KX Industries.
On Oct. 8, the Nanobiotechnology Center, an NSF-funded nanotechnology research center on campus, will hold its fifth annual symposium on the seventh floor of Clark Hall.
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