<p>Oops, here you go:</p>
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<p>U.Va. pursuing top scientists, engineers
School seeks to bring fields to par with its liberal-arts standing
CHARLOTTESVILLE - The University of Virginia is chasing down star-quality scientists and pouring tens of millions of dollars into an effort to become a top research school in science and engineering.</p>
<p>Successfully recruiting top-ranked scientists could lead the school to becoming the source of critical scientific discoveries and inventions. The success would also affect the quality of educational life for U.Va.'s students.</p>
<p>"The spillover would be quite real," said David Hudson, associate vice president for research and graduate studies at U.Va. "You would have hot-shot faculty teaching on the graduate and even undergraduate level. We would get better graduate students and even better undergraduates."</p>
<p>The school's board of visitors has committed $126 million to the effort to bring the sciences and engineering fields up to par with its pre-eminent liberal-arts course.</p>
<p>The effort is expected to take almost a decade to bring to fruition.
"My impression is that U.Va. has had a long-standing reputation in liberal arts," Hudson said. "But our science departments are not quite at that level."</p>
<p>U.Va. hopes to reel in 10 top scientists - national-academies-level researchers - within the next five years. The school got one this month when it hired Joe C. Campbell as the first of its top-level researchers.
Campbell was named to the National Academy of Engineering in 2002, the highest honor in the engineering professions. He is a renowned innovator in electrical engineering and nanotechnology and is widely credited for having developed the modern-day detectors of laser light used in fiber-optic systems in phone and other telecommunication systems.</p>
<p>He is also developing new night-vision technology and a biological sensor that will monitor the presence of substances such as anthrax.
"I'm very enthusiastic," Campbell said of U.Va.'s push. "If I hadn't bought into their vision, I would not be disrupting" my life.
To achieve its goal, U.Va. "needs top faculty, students and the facilities, and they're attacking all three fronts," said Campbell, who is leaving the University of Texas at Austin. "They're putting in all the resources. . . . A lot of schools just say they're doing these things."
Campbell will be bringing up to eight graduate and postgraduate students to U.Va. as well as a $3 million laboratory. U.Va. will be providing a $2.5 million renovation to a "clean room" where Campbell will conduct his research.</p>
<p>Ariel Gomez, vice president for research and graduate studies and the man leading the search for prominent researchers, said the school is specifically seeking scientists who "have the capacity to transform reality - to vastly improve the quality of life at all levels of society with their inventions and discoveries."</p>
<p>U.Va. President John T. Casteen III said hiring Campbell "is the first step in a strategy to transform scientific research here and to position U.Va. as a pre-eminent research institution in science and engineering."
Of the $126 million U.Va. has committed to bolster scientific research, $60 million will be used for recruiting faculty, paying salaries and building new research space.</p>
<p>Hudson said researchers will be sought in fields such as information technology, morphogenesis (which may include some stem-cell research), nanotechnology, aging and global environmental sciences.</p>
<p>"This is pretty ambitious," Hudson said.</p>
<p>That's awesome! UVA definitely seems to have a reputation as a second-rate school for anything science related, but improvements in its science programs should not only raise its profile, but also attract more top international students.</p>