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University of Hawai'i |
(808) 956-8856 Telephone |
For Immediate Release: |
September 24, 1999 |
Contact: Jim Manke - University Relations - 956-6106, manke@hawaii.edu
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| Statement by Alan Teramura, University of Hawai`i Senior
Vice President for Research |
"I have received word that Teruhiko Wakayama will be accepting a position at Rockefeller University in New York. I have not yet seen the terms of the offer and therefore cannot comment on it. Certainly we are aware that Rockefeller is among the top two or three institutions in the country doing work in biomedical research. It's a well-funded private university with 19 Nobel laureates among its faculty and more than two dozen researchers who are members of the National Academy of Science.
"We have been aware that Dr. Wakayama has been aggressively recruited by a number of top research institutions both in the United States and Japan ever since his work with Dr. Yanagimachi received global attention. We had understood that he would continue his work with Team Yana for the next several years and that at some point he would, of course, move on as career opportunities became available. This is a prime example of the extremely competitive environment in which we work with any number of high caliber research projects being carried out at the University of Hawai`i.
"Although we are saddened to see Teru go, there is no question that the excellent work of Team Yana will continue, and we expect more groundbreaking work in the field of molecular and reproductive biology in the months and years ahead. Construction of the new Institute for Biogenesis Research lab facility at the medical school is well underway, and we are actively recruiting the five new researchers who are being committed to the augmentation of this research. We have hired one researcher who will be joining Team Yana from the University of Toronto, and we are in the final stages of negotiations with another scientist from Rutgers University.
"We have also received assurances from ProBio, the company that owns licensing rights to some of the cloning technology developed by Team Yana, that Teru's departure will have no effect whatever on their continued support of this research.
"The University of Hawai`i is a player at the highest levels in this globally competitive search for talent. This speaks well of our growing reputation as a leading research institution, and makes it quite likely that others of our faculty will be 'in play' because of the high caliber work they have carried out here. Again, this is the nature of the environment in which we find ourselves.
"As President Mortimer indicated in his recent convocation speech
we can be proud of the fact that several world-class educators and researchers
have chosen our university as the place to continue their work. Over the
past year or so, we have successfully recruited Dr. John Madey from Duke
University who is establishing a free electron laser laboratory here. Dr.
Hitoshi Yamamoto has joined us from Harvard where his work in high-energy
physics established him as a world-class scientist. We recently announced
that Dr. Edwin Cadman from Yale Medical School will begin work on November
1 as Dean of the John A. Burns School of Medicine. Already on board as of
this month is the new Dean of the College of Engineering, Wai-Fah Chen,
a member of the National Academy of Engineering, who came to us from Purdue
University."
