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MEASURING INNOVATION:

The innovative design of KU's Multidisciplinary Research Building was mentioned in a recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about a company testing a long-standing architectural tenet. Canon Design, which designs state-of-the-art research workplaces, advises clients to build research spaces with abundances of flexible, open spaces. The idea is to foster collaboration among researchers by keeping spaces open. Canon is conducting a three-year study to measure the effectiveness of such buildings, including MRB. The study measures number of grants researchers win, how many studies they publish, their quantity of patented breakthroughs and how they compare to scientists in older, more traditional research buildings.

BEST OF THE BEST:

Arthur Hall, director of the Center for Applied Economics at KU's School of Business, had an opinion piece published in a recent Kansas City Star. Hall was executive director of the Budget Efficiency Savings Teams that studied ways to reduce wasteful government spending in 2003 and 2004. He wrote about Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' recent BEST II effort. "No one questions the economic importance of building and maintaining good roadways and safe bridges. However, it is a mistake to think that every road is a 'good' road from an investment perspective. Taxpayers can 'lose' money by building underused roads just like investors have lost money by building underused buildings or fiber-optic networks," he wrote.

NOTABLE ALUMS

Roseann Runte, a French scholar who earned her doctorate at KU, is the new president - and first woman executive - of Carleton University, Canada's "capital university" in Ottawa. A dual resident of the U.S. and Canada, she was previously president of Old Dominion University. She also is president of the American Council of Education's Commission on International Education and a member of the International Parliament of Cultures.