Starting point

An aerial view of the 136-acre Bayer HealthCare complex, which Yale purchased this summer.

SECOND OPINION
BY SIDNEY HARRIS

Yale announces purchase of 136-acre Bayer campus

President Richard C. Levin announced in June that the university would buy a 17-building, 136-acre pharmaceutical campus that straddles the border of neighboring West Haven and Orange. The Bayer HealthCare complex would provide 550,000 square feet of new laboratory space, 275,000 square feet of office space and 600,000 square feet of warehouse and manufacturing space. Bayer announced last fall that it would close the facility.

The purchase means more than just more room for Yale, which is chronically short of space for laboratories, offices and storage of library and museum collections. New lab space also enhances the university’s research capabilities, particularly at the School of Medicine. And it could encourage the New Haven area’s continued emergence as an incubator of biotech startups—there are 40 biotech companies in the area, many of them spin-offs from Yale research.

“Yale is already in the midst of a boom in the expansion of its science and medical facilities,” Levin said, noting that the university has added several million square feet of space in the last decade and has plans to build more. “The addition of this ready-made, state-of-the-art research space will allow that growth to accelerate at an unprecedented level—potentially making it possible for Yale scientists to develop new discoveries, inventions and cures years earlier. The availability of Bayer’s science laboratories will enable us to undertake research programs that we would not have had space to develop for a decade or more.”

Despite the purchase of the Bayer campus, Yale will continue with plans to add to its facilities in New Haven. “The heart of the Yale campus will always remain in New Haven,” Levin said. “In fact, the university is already committed to building more than 2 million square feet of new facilities in its home city over the next six years. And we are in discussions about the possibility of leasing a significant amount of space in Science Park to help strengthen its role as an incubator for science-based startup companies.”

As part of the purchase, Yale will make voluntary payments to West Haven and Orange proportionate to the voluntary payment made to New Haven. The municipalities will receive additional payment-in-lieu-of-taxes funds from the state of Connecticut in recognition of the property’s future nontaxable academic status. Yale will also invest $1 million over the next three to four years to enhance and strengthen the professional development of middle and high school science teachers in the Greater New Haven area.

Yale is developing plans for the best use of the facilities at the former Bayer complex.

Starting point:

A generational divide, biomedical engineering and a new chapter in organ transplantation

When we were looking for a writer to explore a generational trend—the desire of young doctors to balance their personal and professional lives—we immediately thought of Jenny Blair, M.D. ’04. Jenny had written for us before—a witty essay about medical jargon for Yale Medicine [“From the Beautiful to the Obscure,” Winter 2004] and a feature article about her four years living in the Harkness dormitory [“That College Feeling,” Spring 2004]. She also found time as a medical student to write a column for the Hartford Courant about becoming a doctor. In her cover story for this issue, Jenny spoke to physicians of her own generation who want time for themselves and their families, as well as to older doctors who conduct their lives by a different ethos. Paralleling her story is New Haven photographer Julie Brown’s photo essay about the life of a young ophthalmologist at Yale who’s trying to build a career, spend time with his nephrologist wife and young daughter, and still find time to play soccer.

Boston-based writer Pat McCaffrey traveled to Yale this spring to report on the links between three young scientists in the Department of Biomedical Engineering who started their careers in the laboratory of Robert Langer, Sc.D., at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All three—W. Mark Saltzman, Ph.D., Erin Lavik, Sc.D., and Laura E. Niklason, M.D., Ph.D.—have made huge strides in biomedical engineering, in projects ranging from off-the-shelf vascular tubing for bypass surgery to medication-soaked wafers that dissolve in the brain. They each credit Langer with encouraging and inspiring them.

In our third feature, we welcome liver surgeon Sukru H. Emre, M.D., who arrived at Yale this summer from Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City to head up the organ transplant program. Throughout his career he’s earned accolades from patients as well as former students and residents. “I’d never profiled anyone where so many sources had such extravagant praise for a subject,” said writer Colleen Shaddox.

John Curtis
Managing Editor