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NEW RESOURCES

Filling a critical funding gap for faculty research, UCLA has created a special investment fund aimed at accelerating the conversion of laboratory discoveries into commercial uses. The UCLA Lab2Market Investment Fund, the first of its kind among UC campuses, provides up to $25,000 to individual faculty whose research shows promise in the marketplace, but who lack funding for additional experiments needed to help demonstrate commercial viability. To learn more about the fund, which is managed by the Office of Intellectual Property Administration, and other funding opportunities, a faculty mixer is being held June 15. Faculty interested in attending can contact Kathy Speer at speer@senate.ucla.edu.

SEISMIC CONSTRUCTION

Kinsey Hall will be the last of UCLA’s four original buildings to undergo seismic renovation, set to start this summer. The building was constructed in 1929 as the Physics-Biology Building. When the $35- million construction project is completed in 2006, the structure will become the Humanities Building and house the Department of English and other humanities departments. The lecture hall wing of Knudsen Hall will be named the Kinsey Teaching Pavilion in memory of Professor E. Lee Kinsey, former chair of the Department of Physics, who died in 1961.

LIFE-SAVING ASSISTANCE

The inventor of the Jarvik 2000 heart assist device, heart surgeon Robert Jarvik, met with UCLA heart surgeons and cardiologists May 12 to update them on the status of the current clinical trials in adults and to preview plans for a miniaturized version of the device for children. UCLA has enrolled one patient thus far in the trial — a man in his 60s suffering from heart failure. The Jarvik 2000 successfully pumped his heart for four months until a donor heart was found. The man is doing well and has returned to work.