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Truman W. Eustis III '51, Chairman
Donald R. Geery '49
John A. Krieger '49
Marion Steinmann Joiner '50
C. Richard Jahn '53
Keith R. Johnson '56
Nicholas H. Niles '61
Officers of the Alumni Association:
J. Joseph Driscoll Jr. '44, President
Frank R. Clifford '50,
Secretary-Treasurer
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John Marcham '50
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Illustrations
Cover, by Sol Goldberg '46. Other
pages: 3, Jack Sherman; 17, © Barret
Gallagher '36; 18, from Louisa Farrand
Wood, SpAg '23-24, University
Archives; 19, Susan Cipperly '79, Grad;
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CORNELL. ALUMNI NEWS
merit. Forker says the committee will
work on ways to get the results of Cornell
biotechnology research into the
hands of New York companies, and will
support economic research to try to predict
the impact of biotechnology developments
on the state's business. "There
isn't any way we can restrict the output
of the center to New York State,"
Forker says. "The intent is to get as
much out of it for the state as possible."
The center at Cornell is one of seven
established by the New York State Science
and Technology Foundation, each
focussing on a different technology, and
all with the goal of boosting the state's
economy.
Eventually, it's predicted that the total
biotechnology program at Cornell
will have an annual budget of some $18
million, including federal funding.
The combined program will serve as
an "internal granting agency," Hammes
says. "We want research that is not an
extension of existing work, and that is
strongly interdisciplinary, linking together
people that are not now working
together." A call for research proposals
in June 1983 brought seventy-seven responses,
from which eighteen projects
and three facilities grants were chosen.
Some of the research money is specifically
reserved for "young investigator
awards" designed to attract new faculty
members like Prof. Doug Clark, Chemical
Engineering, a specialist in the brand
new technology of immobilized enzymes.
"Everybody was after him,"
Hammes says. "I think the reason he
came to Cornell was the biotechnology
program."
For now, Hammes says, research will
be concentrated on molecular biology,
enzyme use, and agriculture. Projects
will include studies of how genes work
and how to manipulate them, the use of
enzymes—biological catalysts—in industrial
processes, creating symbiotic relationships
between plants and microbes,
and improving the genes of domestic animals.
An important function of the program,
he adds, will be to create and operate
central research facilities with
equipment of the sort that no single researcher
could afford. These include a
cell culture laboratory, a monoclonal
antibody facility and equipment for
making oligonucleotides—short pieces
of DNA or RNA that can be used to tag
specific genes for study.
Such equipment is now scattered
around the campus, while the administrative
work of the program is handled
from a single office in Chemistry's Olin
Laboratory. Eventually everything will
be brought together in a new building to
be built on the east side of Garden Avenue,
north of both Teagle Hall and a
new entomology building that's nearing
completion. The new building for biotechnology
is about three years down the
road, Hammes says.
Scientists from the research staffs of
the participating companies will also be
working on campus alongside faculty researchers.
The first of these to arrive is
Roy Snoke, a biochemist who has been
with Eastman Kodak's research laboratories
since 1972. At Kodak, Snoke
helped develop blood testing kits which
the firm markets to medical laboratories.
Since coming to Cornell last August
he has been working with Prof. Stanley
Zahler, microbiology and genetic development,
doing basic research to learn
how the genes in a bacteriophage are
regulated. Such research has obvious applications
in industry: it could give genetic
engineers a "switch" to turn chosen
genes on or off at will. But it also
contributes to basic knowledge about genetics,
and could be applied to, say, a
better understanding of cancer.
Snoke says that such "non-productrelated
research" gives him "an opportunity
to do a lot of learning that I
couldn't do at home. It's a sabbatical
for me." He will spend two years at Cornell,
possibly moving to other departments
in the second year. Next year he
will also teach a course, "Bioscience in
Industry." No stranger to academic life,
Snoke was an assistant professor at the
University of Wisconsin before joining
Kodak.
It is this sort of close contact with university
faculty that is expected to benefit
corporations taking part in the biotechnology
program most. None of the research
done in the program, including
that done by visiting industrial scientists,
is proprietary. That is, everything will be
published and made available to everyone.
Standard university patent policies
apply to any patentable inventions arising
out of the program's work, including
wbrk done by corporate scientists on
campus. Participating corporations are
expected to be given first refusal for licensing
such patents. What the participant
firms will get is the chance for a
continuing, close-up look at the "cutting
edge of research" in a field with tremendous
commercial potential.
The idea for the biotechnology program
actually originated with Kodak. A
few years ago Prof. W. Donald Cooke,
Chemistry, who was then Cornell's vice