UC BERKELEY: Plans $500 Million Health Science Initiative
The University of California at Berkeley will announce today the launch of a $500 million health science program, aiming to link 400 physicists, chemists, engineers and biologists in a "concerted long-term effort to solve the world's health problems," the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Campus leaders plan to build two state-of-the-art research buildings, replete with the latest technology, at a cost of $300 million. The campus has already raised $100 million for the new buildings, mostly from private donations. Another $200 million, mostly from state and federal grants, "will be used to hire new faculty, equip the new labs and finance basic research that should ultimately advance disease prevention, diagnosis, drug design and therapy." Many of the initiative's proposed projects will involve disease researchers at UC-San Francisco, creating a two-campus environment. According to Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl, "Broad-based universities like UC Berkeley can bring to the health care table something that most medical schools cannot -- physicists, chemists and engineers trained on the edge of biology and eager to work closely with health scientists," (Perlman, 10/6).
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