DOD center coming to Pitt, new board trustees nominated

The U.S. Department of Defense will grant $1.9 million to Pitt’s Business Institute for… The U.S. Department of Defense will grant $1.9 million to Pitt’s Business Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence to found the DOD’s first Technology Transfer and Commercialization National Center of Excellence for First Response Technologies. The lab will work to put products of DOD lab research on the market and sell them to U.S. fire, police and paramedical departments. Much of the technology the Center will commercialize will be designed to help the departments respond to potential terrorist attacks.

The Nominating Committee of Pitt’s Board of Trustees has named five candidates for membership of the board. And the nominees are … Eva Tansky Blum, senior vice president of PNC Bank; Robert A. Paul, director of the Ampco-Pittsburgh Corporation; Robert P. Randall, president of the Three Rivers Aluminum Company; D. Michael Fisher, a judge on the third circuit Federal Court of Appeals; and Melissa A. Hart, R-Pa., fourth congressional district.

The Board will also add two new Commonwealth trustees, who are appointed by Pennsylvania elected officials. Pennsylvania House Speaker John M. Perzel appointed Lee B. Foster II, board chair of the L.B. Foster Company, and Gov. Ed Rendell appointed Pennsylvania House of Representatives member Dan B. Frankel. Foster and Frankel will join the 10 other commonwealth trustees already on the board.

The National Association of Athletic Development Directors named James J. Duratz, a frequent donor to Pitt, as its University Division Donor of the Year. Durantz’s contributions have funded multiple athletic scholarships, as well as the Durantz Athletic Complex in the UPMC Sports Performance Complex and the Durantz Locker Room at Heinz Field.

The Hong Kong-based Shaw Foundation has awarded Pitt alumnus Herbert W. Boyer its $1 million Shaw Prize in Life Sciences and Medicine, for his research in DNA cloning and genetic engineering. Boyer, a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California at San Francisco, will share the prize with his research partner, Stanley Cohen of Stanford University.

The National Cancer Institute has awarded $1.5 million to Sanjay K. Srivastava, an assistant professor of pharmacology at Pitt’s School of Medicine, to study the effects of a vegetable-derived dietary agent in preventing pancreatic cancer.