Clark University - Clark News winter 2005
Creating a community of scientists (spring 2005)
The new Cathy '83 and Marc '81 Lasry Center for Bioscience blends science, beauty and camaraderie
By Judith Jaeger
Learn about the new Kresge grants
Clark's new Cathy '83 and Marc '81 Lasry Center for Bioscience opened in January for the start of the spring semester. The 50,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art facility is the new home for Clark's Biology Department. The Lasry Center for Bioscience will be dedicated on April 28 in honor of Cathy '83 and Marc '81 Lasry, who donated $5 million toward the cost of the building.
"Cathy's and Marc's generosity to the University is well known at Clark and beyond," says President John Bassett. "This new center bearing their name is a central part of Clark's commitment to excellence in teaching and learning in the new century."
Marc Lasry, a former Clark trustee, is the founder and managing partner of Avenue Capital Group, an investment firm that manages in excess of $6.5 billion. Previously, he was co-director of bankruptcy and corporate reorganization at Cowen & Company and served as director of private debt at Smith Vasiliou Management Company. He also specialized in bankruptcy law at the New York law firm of Angel & Frankel.
Cathy Cohen Lasry earned a degree in English at Clark and later worked at Holiday House Publishing. She currently serves on Clark's Board of Trustees and is an ardent political activist. She is involved with the Friends of Eleanor Roosevelt and also serves on the board of the Trevor Day School in New York.
"Clark is an institution that does wonderful work across the academic spectrum, and this facility will be the home of faculty and students who will continue that tradition," Cathy Cohen Lasry says.
"We are very pleased to be able to see Clark make this commitment to a new science facility and happy to be able to support this important project," adds Marc Lasry.
Blending science, beauty and community
Designed by Tsoi/Kobus and Associates of Cambridge, Mass., the Lasry Center for Bioscience includes two classrooms, seven teaching labs and 12 research labs, 14 faculty offices, two conference rooms and three lounge spaces. It also includes a sequencing facility, dark room and many lab-support spaces that allow for more shared equipment. But the facility is not your typical science building. Light fills the laboratories and classrooms and floods the dramatic atrium lobby through banks of windows. Accents in warm wood and the greens, blues and yellows on the walls give visitors a welcome feeling as they enter.
"It's a beautiful, beautiful space," says Susan Foster, chair of the department.
Foster especially loves the sitting areas throughout the building. Soft chairs, tables and whiteboards give students a place to work and collaborate. The building, including the front lawn, is also wireless, making it easier for students to work in the building.
"The Lasry Center is going to increase the sense of community in the department and the desire to use the building," Foster says. "It will help us attract good students, but more importantly, it will make those students want to be around the department a lot more."
Camaraderie and collaboration are fostered by key features of the building. Biologist Denis Larochelle, who gives the Lasry Center for Bioscience "thumbs way up," says the two parts of the facility he thought were mainly architectural flares—the triangular shape and atrium lobby—have turned out to be great assets.
"In the atrium, you can see people walking around. You just see people more," he says, adding that the shape of the building makes it very easy to get to other labs and equipment. Although he thought the atrium would be noisy, Larochelle says students are using the lobby as a quiet study area.
Biologist Deborah Robertson is also pleased to see students spending time in the building beyond their classes and labs. "The common spaces are being used by everyone—undergraduates, graduate students and faculty—and make the building feel even larger than its footprint," Robertson says.
"The newness and the openness are quite spectacular," adds biologist Tim Lyerla. "I believe it has already brought about more camaraderie among us than we had in Sackler, where we were spread out into two essentially separate places. Beyond that, it's quite an honor and a privilege to have an entire building devoted to one science department." View more photos of the building at www.clarku.edu/sciences.
Clark recently received two grants from the Kresge Foundation for the purchase and maintenance of instrumentation vital to chemistry and physics research. The first Kresge grant of $100,000 went toward the purchase of an X-ray diffractometer, which also received funds from PolyCarbon Industries Inc., and a superconducting quantum inference device (SQUID) magnetometer, which also received funds from the National Science Foundation, for the Chemistry and Physics departments.
A Kresge Challenge Science Instrumentation grant supports an endowment for the maintenance and replacement costs for the two sophisticated and highly calibrated instruments, which have a typical lifespan of five to seven years. Clark must raise a total endowment of $514,800, and then Kresge will contribute $102,960.
The X-ray diffractometer and SQUID support the overall goals for Clark’s science programs. These goals include the current renovation of the 32,000 square-foot biophysics building which will house physics, mathematics and computer science. The Jeppson Laboratories house chemistry and the Sackler Sciences Center will be shared by chemistry and physics. Specifically, the X-ray and SQUID instruments are critical to the research of chemists Luis Smith and Mark Turnbull and physicist Chris Landee.
The X-Ray diffractometer allows Smith to look at the composition of an entire compound rather than one slice or side of it, which is important to his work on creating mesospores—honeycomb-like structures. He is pursuing the idea that such honeycomb structures with chemical properties can be used for chemical reactions—a basis for nanotechnology. Identifying a process to replicate the honeycomb structure is key to the development of certain molecular technologies.
“If this instrument weren’t here, I wouldn’t be able to do my research,” says Smith, who notes that Clark had such an instrument 10 years ago. When it broke, however, there were no funds to fix or replace it. Since then, data requiring an X-ray diffractometer was collected at other universities and often mailed back to Clark.
“With the instrument right here, we can go from the diffractometer to the lab bench and tweak what we’re trying to do,” Smith says.
Landee and Turnbull, who have a long research partnership, use both the SQUID magnetometer and X-ray diffractometer in their research to develop new magnetic materials. They use the X-ray diffractometer to confirm the composition and indentify materials, and then use the SQUID to characterize the correlations between a material’s structure and its magnetic properties. Turnbull’s and Landee’s research has far reaching implications, as magnetic fields are used in many basic appliances, including computers.
Turnbull and Smith note that with an endowment to ensure that the instruments will be working and available for many years to come, they will also be able to incorporate the instruments into the department’s materials-science curriculum.
“The research applications are as much about teaching as they are about research,” says Turnbull, who adds that the instruments are easy to operate with proper training. “By teaching students to use these instruments, we will be able to give students the opportunity to apply what they’re learning and to discover new things.”
To support the endowment for the X-ray diffractometer and SQUID, contact Jeremy Hastings, major gifts officer, at hastings@clarku.edu, 508-793-7200.
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