Columns Front Page

By Sharron Hannon

The official dedication of a new 36,000-square-foot, $5.2 million addition to the university’s Complex Carbohydrate Research Center was greeted with toasts and speeches from university officials and key players in what President Michael Adams termed “one of the real success stories of this university.”
The addition houses an 800-MHz nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer--a super-conducting magnet with stored energy equivalent to a “semi going down the highway at more than 40 miles per hour,” according to James Prestegard, an NMR expert recruited by UGA earlier this year as a Varian/Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar.
The high-field spectrometer--one of only six of its kind in the country--allows subtle probes of how parts of molecules interact with one another and will serve as the stimulus for numerous research projects.
NMR spectroscopy is one of several overlapping, interdisciplinary specialties being developed at the CCRC, which was founded at UGA in 1985 by co-directors Peter Albersheim and Alan Darvill and a 16-member research team.
Today, CCRC personnel number nearly 140--including faculty, staff, post-doctoral research associates, and graduate and undergraduate students. Center scientists are involved in well over
100 collaborations with researchers in 26 states and 15 countries.
“We are fortunate to live and work in this state at this point in history,” said board of regents chairman Ed Jenkins at the Oct. 21 dedication event at the facility on Riverbend Road. “Georgia is at a never-before-seen level of national prominence and the CCRC is a symbol of our unending drive for national and international recognition.”

Jenkins and other speakers at the dedication praised the Georgia Research Alliance, which garners funds from state and private sources for research work at six Georgia colleges and universities. GRA funding was crucial in providing the new CCRC facilities and equipment.
“The GRA is bullish on the CCRC,” said GRA president William Todd. “This is precisely the kind of investment we like to make.”
In addition to the NMR facilities, the new addition houses seven research laboratories, a technology-transfer laboratory, and specialized rooms for chromatography, computer graphics and animal cell culture, plus a 200-seat auditorium and a library.
Four of the seven research labs are occupied by Geert-Jan Boons, who is establishing the CCRC’s research program in synthetic carbohydrate chemistry. Boons joined the CCRC faculty this summer, bringing with him a 15-member research team representing 10 different nationalities.
Boons describes synthetic carbohydrate chemistry as a still-developing field of research. His group is seeking to produce fully synthetic vaccines--with a particular focus on Group B Type III streptococcus, which can be fatal to babies infected at birth. The goal: to efficiently produce a safe vaccine for pregnant women.
This and other projects bring the CCRC an annual research income of some $4 million from competitive grants and contracts.
CCRC researchers collaborate with colleagues in Georgia and around the world via the Internet and through distance-learning. In addition, the center offers hands-on courses during the summer for students and established researchers from academe and industry. The new addition provides dedicated lab and lecture space for this purpose.