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Chancellor gets look at international KU work

These trips were no day at the beach. Chancellor Robert Hemenway took a pair of trips this summer to the frozen expanse of the Greenland Ice Sheet and to a British university to get a close look at some of KU's most cutting-edge research and partnerships.

On July 31, Hemenway and Stuart Bell, dean of the School of Engineering, traveled to the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling Site. They represented KU's Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets at an influential scientific gathering. They traveled with Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. Government and academic officials from more than a dozen nations and Thomas L. Friedman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New York Times, were also along for the trip.

Chancellor gets look at international KU work

Submitted/Stuart Bell

Submitted/Stuart Bell Stuart Bell, dean of the School of Engineering, left, and Chancellor Robert Hemenway take a moment for a photo during their recent trip to a research station in Greenland.

NEEM, in northwest Greenland, is a scientific partnership among researchers from 14 nations. To learn about global warming, scientists are working to drill and retrieve an ice core from the Eemian era, the interglacial era that took place more than 115,000 years ago. During the Eemian, average temperatures were about five degrees warmer and sea levels were about five meters higher than they are today.

Earlier this summer, Hemenway traveled with Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to the University of Nottingham in England to meet with top administrators and researchers andleaders of a life-sciences firm with major investments in Kansas.

The visit included a meeting with Sir Colin Campbell, vice chancellor and an authority on higher education well known for boosting technology transfer between universities and private enterprise. Hemenway also spent time at the university's Magnetic Resonance Center to meet with Sir Peter Mansfield, professor emeritus of physics, who in 2003 received the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his discoveries that helped lead to the invention of magnetic resonance imaging, commonly known as MRI.

The governor and chancellor also received an update on OncImmune, a cutting-edge European biosciences firm developed in the lab of John Robertson, a professor of surgery at Nottingham. The company develops products for early detection of cancer.

OncImmune recently established its North American headquarters in Lenexa to bring it closer to KU breast-cancer researchers. The firm's $30 million investment should create 120 Kansas jobs and develop 20 positions at KU in the coming years.

Hemenway said the two international research projects highlight how cutting edge research at KU can help address regional and global problems.

"Our researchers from the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets are conducting some of the most sophisticated work in their field," Hemenway said. "This ongoing partnership with great minds from around the world will only strengthen and advance the knowledge base about the Greenland Ice Sheet and what we can learn from it.

"KU's partnership with OncImmune speeds our progress to the creation of a truly world-class cancer center," Hemenway said. "It's a collaboration that shows how University of Kansas researchers, together with cutting-edge life sciences companies, can combat cancer and strengthen our region's economy."

TOPONYMS:

Moore Hall, at 19th Street just west of Iowa, is headquarters for the Kansas Geological Survey. It is named for Raymond C. Moore, state geologist, KGS director and a distinguished professor of invertebrate paleontology at KU for more than 45 years. He joined KGS and KU in 1916 and was with the university until 1962. The modern brick structure was dedicated in February 1973. For more, visit www.buildings.ku.edu.