NSF Director Lane to Present Dedication Lecture for CNST

NSF Director Lane to Present Dedication Lecture for CNST
BY LIA UNRAU
Rice News Staff
April 23, 1998

Neal Lane, director of the National Science Foundation and Clinton nominee
to the White House science adviser post, will participate in dedication ceremonies
of E. Dell Butcher Hall, the new home to Rice’s Center for Nanoscale Science
and Technology (CNST).

Sponsored by the James A. Baker III Institute of Public Policy’s Shell Lecture
Series, Lane will present the lecture "Science, Technology and Human Interest:
Our Greatest Challenge" at 4 p.m. April 29 in Doré Commons of Baker
Hall. The lecture is open to the Rice community.

Exactly two years from the date Rice officials broke ground for the building,
the new E. Dell Butcher Hall will be dedicated.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled for the evening of April 30 in the outdoor
amphitheater of the building. Because of limited space, only faculty, staff
and students affiliated with the CNST, alumni and distinguished visitors have
been invited to attend. The ceremony will officially open the 83,000-square-foot
research and teaching facility to faculty, staff, students and administrators
involved in chemistry and nanoscale science and technology–one of the nation’s
fastest-growing areas of research.

"This is the culmination of a critical phase in the life of CNST, the
completion of this building and its occupancy," said Richard Smalley, director
of the CNST and the Hackerman Professor of Chemistry. "It’s a wonderful
place to do research because of the instrumentation that’s been provided and
because of the ambiance. It’s very conducive to interaction–in the hallways,
on the patios, and in the instrumentation facility where we meet people from
other groups. Now we are entering the recruiting phase, in which we will fill
endowed chairs and junior faculty positions. In universities, people are everything."

Participating in the ceremony will be Bill Barnett, chair of the Board of Governors;
Kent Anderson, chair, building and grounds committee; Malcolm Gillis, president
of Rice University; James Kinsey, dean of the School of Natural Sciences; Michael
Carroll, dean of the School of Engineering; Robert Curl, the Wiess Professor
of Natural Sciences; Smalley; and Lorain Butcher, wife of the late E. Dell Butcher.

At a small private reception prior to the ceremony, two portraits will be unveiled,
one of E. Dell Butcher and another of Nobel laureates Curl and Smalley.

Dell Butcher Hall, designed by architect Antoine Predock, is a four-story building
with labs, classrooms and conference space. Research laboratories feature the
most advanced equipment available for nanoscale science research. Three large
teaching laboratories for chemistry offer undergraduate students the ability
to learn in a state-of-the-art environment. In addition to the CNST faculty
and researchers, about one-third of the chemistry department faculty has offices
and labs in the building.

"This facility is dramatically improved over what we had before,"
said Graham Glass, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry. "Every
student now has his or her own enclosed hood and work space. Although we moved
in a little late in the fall semester, the students are all scrambling for new
experiments, because they have achieved about twice as much as they did in the
old building." No longer hampered by the environmental constraints that
many chemistry labs still have, organic chemistry students at Rice will be able
to study more toxic chemicals used in industry, and so be better prepared, Glass
said.

This is the second building to be added to the campus during the past year.
Last fall, Baker Hall, home to the James A. Baker III Institute for Pubic Policy,
was dedicated.

For related information visit the following Web sites:

Center for the Study of Nanoscale Technology: http://cnst.rice.edu/

National Science Foundation: www.nsf.gov