New buildings reflect commitment to sciences

The dedication of two new buildings on the main campus in October highlighted the university’s commitment to scientific research and education. The Department of Biomedical Engineering got a new home in the Daniel L. Malone Engineering Center, a five-story, 63,117-square-foot building on Prospect Street. Research there will focus on biomedical engineering, materials science and nanotechnology. The construction was made possible by a $24 million gift from John C. Malone, a 1963 Yale College alumnus and chair of the Liberty Media Corp., and is named for his father, an engineer at General Electric.

“It stands as a statement to all that Yale engineering is an integral part of this university’s most vibrant intellectual life,” said Paul A. Fleury, Ph.D., dean of the Faculty of Engineering. “The research and teaching that will take place here will center upon those forefront areas of biomedical engineering, materials science and nanotechnology that underpin 21st-century progress.”

Also on Prospect Street is the 105,000-square-foot, three-story Class of 1954 Chemistry Research Building, the result of the largest class gift in the university’s history. Each floor is dedicated to one of three areas: synthetic organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry and chemical biology. Projects under way include developing new materials for solar energy and new catalysts to facilitate hydrogen storage as a fuel source, and investigating the molecular basis for energy transduction in plant photosynthesis.

Provost Andrew D. Hamilton, Ph.D., said a collaboration among the administration, the faculty and the Class of 1954 made the building possible. At the dedication Hamilton had a representative of each group help create a chemical reaction in which three clear liquids were mixed together before the solution turned to Yale blue. “It only works when all three components of the reaction are present,” Hamilton said. “Cooperation is vital for continued Yale success, as this reaction continues again and again and again.”