Donation boosts science buildings.

Byline: Greg Bolt The Register-Guard

LOKEY'S LARGESSE Lorry Lokey's gifts to the UO over the past 18 months have made him the biggest donor to academics in the school's history. Here's what he's given so far: $12.5 million: For a new College of Education building. $10 million: For the Lorry I. Lokey Laboratories building. $5 million: For the School of Music building $4.5 million: To establish the George S. Turnbull Portland Center for programs in journalism and communications.

With a gift that will help University of Oregon researchers probe matter in its smallest forms, former communications executive Lorry Lokey on Thursday kicked off construction of the UO's first new science building in 17 years and also became the biggest academic donor in campus history.

Lokey's gift of $10 million toward a pair of new science buildings brought his total donations to the university to $32 million and builds on bequests toward two other buildings and a new program in Portland. His latest donation will create a laboratory for the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnology Institute - known as ONAMI - and will be the first campus building to carry Lokey's name.

The $16 million Lorry I. Lokey Laboratories building will provide a high-tech home for instruments and researchers that make up the UO's nanotechnology initiative. And it will be built 19 feet underground, anchored to a slab of bedrock that will provide such a stable platform for ultrasensitive instruments that the lab could become a national magnet for nanoscience experiments.

"In short, we are building and digging a truly world-class facility," said UO President Dave Frohnmayer, who presided over the groundbreaking ceremony.

But the day held another big announcement. Frohnmayer said Lokey's gift also allows the university to begin planning for a second, larger science building, the Integrative Science Building. The multistory, $60 million structure would provide a home for classrooms and instrument labs used in the UO's cognitive neuroscience programs and physical, biological and computer information science.

The Lokey Laboratories building will be up to 30,000 square feet and will be built beneath what is now known as the Science Green, a grassy space between Huestis and Deschutes halls along East 13th Avenue. The Integrative Science Building, with groundbreaking expected in 2009, is planned for a grassy area between Deschutes and Oregon halls and Franklin Boulevard.

Lokey, the founder and chief executive of the Business Wire news service before selling it to billionaire investor Warren Buffet, has shown particular interest in funding science. He called research into stem cells and nanotechnology vital to improving the health of future generations.

He also said he wants to see the UO enter a renaissance and become a regional education powerhouse.

"I want to see the University of Oregon looked on as the crown jewel of the Northwest, not the University of Washington," he said to enthusiastic applause.

Lokey's gift will be split between the two projects, with $3 million going to the underground lab building and $7 million to the Integrative Science Building. The UO will seek a total of $30 million in private funding for the larger building and $30 million in state bonds as its top priority in the 2007 Legislature.

Frohnmayer said the buildings will be the first new science buildings on campus since 1989, when the Willamette Hall science complex was dedicated. He said more room is needed because research funding has increased 50 percent in the past five years - mostly from increases in federal research grants - with no increase in space.

The Lokey Laboratories building will house more than 20 sophisticated instruments used to probe materials at the nanometer scale, or one-billionth of a meter. It also will take the UO's long history of collaborative research to a new level, make lab space available not only to its own scientists across disciplines but to researchers from other Oregon and out-of-state universities, government labs and private industry.

The idea is to provide a kind of high-tech extension service focused on nanotechnology and linked through a next-generation computer network to be known as the "nanonet." That will allow researchers all over the world to rent time on the UO's instruments 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who was on hand for the event, praised that kind of collaboration and said it not only is making Oregon a national model for research and innovation but also has the potential to produce benefits beyond pure science.

"Nanotechnology will help us bolster our economy and extend the hope of prosperity to more people," he said. "We will create new jobs for Oregonians, well-paying jobs in clean industries. We will position Oregon to take advantage of even greater opportunities in industries that have not yet been born."

The Lokey building is financed by an unusual mix of private gifts and taxable bonds, rather than the tax-free bonds usually used for public buildings. That will allow researchers from Oregon's most advanced high-tech industries a level of access to labs and instruments unprecedented among public universities.

UO chemistry professor David Johnson, who heads the university's ONAMI program, said having that mix of researchers in the same building inevitably leads to new ideas and new ways of looking at things that could never happen if scientists are isolated in individual labs.

"It's a unique mix of backgrounds that will help us solve problems we might not ever have been able to solve," he said.

The latest gift might not be the last one from Lokey, who never attended the UO but grew up in Portland. He said it makes him "extremely happy" to give money to projects with the potential to improve the people's quality of life and said that over the next 10 years he intends to drain the foundation he formed after selling his company.

"I have a strong feeling that if you carry your name on something, you have to give it better support," he said with a smile. "That'll come."