Tech Transfer Office gears up
As director of Hopkins' Office of Technology Transfer, Nina Siegler wrestles with complicated research concepts and cutting-edge lab contraptions. But she likes to think of her job in very simple terms. Siegler operates, she says, like an old-fashioned marriage broker.
   "Picture an hourglass," Siegler says. "On one side are ideas and inventions developed here at Hopkins. On the other side is the world at large. My office sits in the little tube at the center, the one that connects the two sides of the hourglass. We try to arrange marriages between inventions created by Hopkins researchers and companies that want to make commercial products based on these inventions."
   To accomplish this matchmaking, Siegler and her staff help faculty and staff members to obtain patents, copyrights and licensing agreements for technology breakthroughs that arise in seven of the university's nine divisions. (The School of Medicine and the Applied Physics Laboratory have their own offices of technology transfer.) Projects can range from instructional CD-ROMs developed in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences to miniature pumps invented by Whiting School engineers to music software devised by faculty members at the Peabody Conservatory. Full story...

Start of 'Great Excavations' at Homewood
Tons of bricks are about to hit the Homewood campus like Š well, like a ton of bricks.
   Flatbed trucks have begun rolling onto campus with the first of 1 million or more bricks to be delivered over the next few months. The pavers will be laid down this summer, replacing acres of asphalt walks and roads in perhaps the most dramatic remaking of Homewood since Johns Hopkins first occupied the ridge above Charles Street 86 years ago.
   It's a whole lot of bricks.
   The initial order of 900,000 will arrive on 139 trucks, one to two trucks per day, said Steve Campbell, interim executive director of Facilities Management. Each truck carries 12 pallets, with 540 bricks per pallet.
   A staging area has been set up south of the AMRs and just north of Homewood House Museum. After Spring Fair, a second area will open in the southern end of the lower quad. The bricks will be stored in those two spots until the project gets under way, immediately after commencement. Full story...

The Gazette The Johns Hopkins University Suite 100
3003 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218 (410) 516-8514 gazette@resource.ca.jhu.edu.