ROSSLYN, Va. - The Whitaker Foundation has made its first two Leadership Awards totaling more than $30 million to The Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, San Diego - the largest individual grants in its 23-year history.

"These intensely competitive awards are a tribute to the excellence of biomedical engineering educational and research programs at both of these outstanding academic institutions," said G. Burtt Holmes, Chairman of the Foundation Governing Committee.

"All the Leadership Award applications underwent a rigorous selection process," he said. "These awards confirm that biomedical engineering education and research programs at Hopkins and UCSD are of the highest quality and will continue to have a major impact on cost-effective health care," he said.

Using its $17-million Leadership Award and matching funds, Johns Hopkins will establish the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and build a new 42,500-net-square-foot building nearing the engineering school at the Homewood campus in Baltimore. A dozen new faculty members will be hired, providing extraordinary new opportunities in education and in three targeted research areas. The building will give biomedical engineering, now located across town at the medical school, a new presence at the college of engineering and stimulate increased interaction with faculty in other engineering departments.

UCSD will use its $13.8-million grant and matching funds for a new 47,000-net-square-foot Bioengineering Building at the Jacobs School of Engineering and the creation of the Technology Transfer and Clinical Development Center. The center will take advantage of the bustling high-technology corridor surrounding the university to speed the commercialization of biomedical engineering advances originating in UCSD laboratories. Six new faculty members will be hired to lead new educational and research programs. UCSD has t
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Contact: Frank Blanchard
fb@whitaker.org
703-528-2430
Whitaker Foundation
14-Oct-1998