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Trustees meet
The trustees of the University of Georgia Foundation held their regular fall meeting at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education Oct. 9. In addition to updates on plans and programs at the university, they heard a report from Stiles Kellett, chair of the investment committee, about the state of the UGA endowment in the face of falling stock market prices.
Kellett reported that the endowment rose 22.1 percent from June 30, 1997, to June 30, 1998, from $170 million to $213 million. Then, in the first quarter of fiscal year 1999 (July 1 through Sept. 30, 1998), the value of the endowment fell 9.8 percent to $201 million. Kellett noted that the stock market had fallen 17 percent in the same period, and said the members of the committee were confident the investment strategy was the correct one for the long term.
New CCRC building
The new 30,000-square-foot, $5.2 million addition to the university’s Complex Carbohydrate Research Center will be dedicated on Oct. 21, at 10:30 a.m. The event, which will include tours of the facilities, will take place at CCRC, which is located at 220 Riverbend Road.
Ed Jenkins, chairman of the University System of Georgia Board of Regents will speak at the dedication, which is open to the public.
“Nearly all the new facilities are in use now and have been for six months since the building was opened,” says Alan Darvill, co-director of CCRC.
The addition was funded though a grant from the Georgia Research Alliance, a consortium of state government, private industry and six Georgia universities. The GRA not only funded the addition and the new equipment for it, but also supported the hiring of a new Eminent Scholar in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, James Prestegard.
The addition allows CCRC to greatly expand its NMR program, making it a regional center where scientists can use the powerful technology to study molecules. NMR spectroscopy operates on the same principle as magnetic resonance imagining, the now-familiar medical procedure. Instead of looking at structure on the anatomical level, as in MRI, researchers use NMR spectroscopy to study structures at the molecular and atomic levels.
Understanding structures at the cell level is crucial in the design of drugs and other chemicals used in business and industry. The new NMR facility at CCRC will give researchers the ability to study atomic structures with amazing resolution.
In addition to the NMR facilities, the new building also houses four large research labs, each of some 1,200 square feet. They are being used to study synthetic carbohydrate chemistry by a research group headed by Geert-Jan Boons, who came to the CCRC this summer with a 15-person research team from the University of Birmingham in England.
The facility also has room for another research area, and CCRC is now planning to hire a scientist in the near future to work in glycobiology.
The building also includes:
- A 200-seat auditorium for lectures and other functions;
- A library that houses scientific journals and two computer terminals with all CCRC databases;
- A biotechnology-transfer laboratory, for special classes in methods to characterize complex carbohydrates during part of the year and at other times for undergraduate researchers and visiting scientists.
The Complex Carbohydrate Research Center was founded at UGA in 1985. Its prime goal is the study of how complex carbohydrates act in biological processes. |
