EDITORS: Media members are invited to meet with Dixon and Emr 9-10 a.m. at Rackham, and media parking passes are available. Additional biographical information is available on Dixon, Emr, Miller and Williams upon request, as are photographs.

ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan will celebrate the launch of its new Life Sciences Institute and the construction of its 230,000-square-foot, $96 million Life Sciences Institute building with a series of events April 11.

An official kickoff ceremony at 10 a.m. in Rackham Auditorium on U-M’s Central Campus will begin the festivities. On the agenda are keynotes by Institute co-directors Jack E. Dixon and Scott D. Emr, as well as remarks by life sciences students Meredith W. Miller and Nakia Williams. U-M President Lee C. Bollinger will speak, and Ypsilanti High School teacher Robin Evans will present the work of 21 of her students who have painted panels with the theme “What life science will look like in the future.”

A reception in the Rackham East Study Lounge will follow the ceremony.

At 5 p.m., Bollinger will moderate a panel discussion on art, ethics and genetics at the U-M Museum of Art. Panelists include Peter Ubel, associate professor of internal medicine; and Elizabeth Petty, associate professor of internal medicine and associate professor of human genetics; and Carole Kismaric and Marvin Heiferman, partners in the New York-based company Lookout and independent curators of the museum’s current exhibition, “Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution.” The panel discussion is being organized by the Museum and the U-M’s Life Sciences, Values and Society Program, which focuses attention on the social impact of advances in the life sciences and is an important component of the U-M’s Life Sciences Initiative.

[Central Campus map, Rackham Building upper left center, Museum of Art lower left center]

The Life Sciences Institute is part of the initiative, launched in 1999 as a campuswide effort to coordinate and expand research and teaching in such rapidly advancing fields as genomics, chemical and structural biology, cognitive neuroscience and bioinformatics.

The institute building is scheduled for completion in 2003, and when finished, it will serve as a hub for cross-disciplinary research and teaching in the life sciences at U-M.

The institute was formally established Jan. 1 with an endowment of $130 million. U-M Regents appointed the co-directors of the Institute in October, and earlier this month the Regents approved the first faculty appointment to the institute. Construction is under way at the building site on Washtenaw Avenue at Palmer Drive. (Investigate http://www.lifesciences.umich.edu/institute/facilities.html for a map and for live Webcam shots of construction.)

Dixon, the Minor J. Coon Professor of Biological Chemistry and chair of biological chemistry in the Medical School, will begin his new position as co-director of the Life Sciences Institute
Emr, professor of cellular and molecular medicine in the School of Medicine at the University of California at San Diego and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, will assume duties as co-director of the Life Sciences Institute on
Miller is an honors student in chemistry and biochemistry from Bloomfield Hills, Mich. She has participated in the award-winning Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, the American Chemical Society Student Affiliates, and Women in Science and Engineering. She received a National Science Foundation Summer Research Fellowship in 2000. She is also a research assistant studying radiotherapy, drugs and invasive surgery to treat cancer.

Williams, a microbiology major who came to U-M from Texas, plans to attend medical school in the fall. She is a student adviser with the Black Pre-Medical Association, a Biomedical Peer Advisor with the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, and a co-founder of MASCI (MAth/SCIence) Challenge, an undergraduate organization founded by the Black Pre-Medical Association and the National Society of Black Engineers that hosts a weekend conference for underrepresented minority high school students from Michigan.

For more information on the Life Sciences Initiative: http://www.lifesciences.umich.edu/

For details of the event: http://www.lifesciences.umich.edu/events/index.html

For background on the establishment of the Institute: http://www.lifesciences.umich.edu/overview/regents.html

For more information on the Life Sciences, Values and Society Program: http://www.lifesciences.umich.edu/values/

Life Sciences Institute buildingJack E. DixonMuseum of ArtLife Sciences InitiativeCentral Campus maphttp://www.lifesciences.umich.edu/institute/facilities.htmlUndergraduate Research Opportunity Program