Dear Whiting School Community,

It was wonderful to see so many of you at Alumni Weekend 2018. I hope you enjoyed your guided tours, guest lectures, student activities, sporting events, and social gatherings. Spring is a special time on Homewood campus.

Those of you who were with us no doubt noticed some exciting changes. Though our familiar brick walkways and Federal style of architecture remain a constant, we continue to renovate, upgrade, and expand our physical structures—erecting new buildings such as beautiful Malone Hall, renovating spaces as such as Latrobe Hall and the Wyman Park Building, and purchasing new space.

The pace of change here is almost dizzying. In the last year alone, the Whiting School’s footprint on Homewood campus—and slightly beyond—has increased by 20 percent, allowing us to expand our critical core research facilities and world-class laboratories, and add more space for centers and institutes, such as the Center for Integrated Structure-Materials Modeling and Simulation and the Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute, to name a few.

Johns Hopkins also recently purchased the historic Stieff Silver complex, a two-building, half-acre former silver factory located a short walk from campus. This acquisition enables us to make significant investments in our Materials Characterization and Processing research core, which will serve the entire Johns Hopkins community. We also continue our strategic funding of other critical core research facilities, which include the Integrated Imaging Center in Dunning Hall and Maryland Advanced Research Computing Center on the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center campus.

A few blocks to the east of Stieff, we are busy building out our entrepreneurship ecosystem. Recently, we introduced you to FastForward R. House, a trendy innovation hub providing 9,000 square feet of office, meeting, and lab space for our faculty entrepreneurs. This summer, in partnership with Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, we will open a new 10,000-square-foot student innovation hub, FastForward U, across from R. House. This space will support our students’ entrepreneurial activities with a metal shop, woodworking shop, paint booth, and other facilities.

These investments allow us to continue to attract and retain world-class students and researchers. They also enable us to plan for enhancements to academic offerings, and I look forward to sharing details of exciting new programs soon. Until then, consider returning to Homewood for Alumni Weekend 2019.

Sincerely,

Ed Schlesinger