Guest Contributor
Three … two … one,” cheered members of the Penn community as alumnus P. Roy Vagelos, his wife, Diana T. Vagelos, and Interim President J. Larry Jameson pressed a button that ignited a display of patterned lights onto the exterior facade of the University’s newest building: the Vagelos Laboratory for Energy Science and Technology.
Jameson expressed his gratitude to the Vagelos family, emphasizing that Benjamin Franklin, the University’s founder, would take pride in seeing science harnessed for the benefit of society.
“This building is going to be an epicenter where we bring people together from various fields with expertise to address what feels like an existential crisis, not only to those of us in this room, but for the next generation,” said Jameson. “We’re going to tackle this one with passion and with the kind of tools that [P. Roy and Diana T. Vagelos] inspired us to develop in interdisciplinary programs and problem solving.”
He extended gratitude to the Vagelos family for their transformative support. Their vision, Jameson noted, strengthens Penn’s leadership in climate science and enables the pursuit of technologies poised to drive impactful discoveries. This is one way Penn is leading on a great challenge of our time, part of In Principle and Practice, the University’s strategic vision.
“You thank us, but we thank you, because this is the best investment that we can make, and that is to invest in people who are smarter than we are and will live longer—I’m 95, by the way,” chuckled P. Roy Vagelos, a graduate of the School of Arts & Sciences (SAS). He highlighted how the people in the laboratory will accomplish “tons more things than Diana and I could have done on our own.”
“And so, we want to thank all of you here and say that the reason we’re here is because of you. You have the talent, you have the will, you have the know-how to make inventions and improve lives and society going forward. And there’s nothing better that we can do.”
In welcoming the guests who played an instrumental role in shaping Vagelos Laboratory, Deputy Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences Jeffrey Kallberg expressed gratitude to the architects, Behnisch Architekten, along with the engineers and builders, University staff, faculty, administration partners, and the Vageloses.
“Roy and Diana have been with us throughout this journey, sharing our commitment to this critical need, keeping an eye on the larger vision, and asking us: What will it take to get there?” said Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics and associate dean for the natural sciences Mark Trodden.
“Their commitment to energy science at Penn began in 2011 with a gift to establish an undergraduate dual degree program based in Arts & Sciences and [Penn] Engineering—the program now known as VIPER,” Trodden said.
A home for interdisciplinary research
Located at 3200 Walnut St., the $173 million cutting-edge facility is designed to propel interdisciplinary research, and also house the Vagelos Integrated Program in Energy Research (VIPER), an undergraduate dual-degree program run jointly by the School of Arts & Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS).
Speaking to the diverse research that will be conducted in the Vagelos Laboratory, Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering Vijay Kumar pointed to IoT4Ag, a National Science Foundation Center on Precision Agriculture.
“This important work will happen right here within the second-floor Chen Family Laboratory. And right down the hall,” added Kumar, “the Linda Ye and Robin Ren Core Instrumentation Facility will house instrumentation and technology that can be found nowhere else in our region. Using high-powered spectroscopy, researchers can study materials at the atomic scale—vital to inventing the next generation of batteries, solar cells and energy storage devices.”
This story was written by Nathi Magubane. To read the full article, please visit Penn Today.