Celebration set for naming brain institute building at UF

Public ceremonies are scheduled at 3 p.m. Friday, Feb. 9, for naming the campuswide University of Florida Brain Institute in honor of its largest private donors---the late Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight.

UF President Charles E. Young will serve as host for the half-hour program outside the institute’s entrance on Newell Drive at the Northeast corner of the UF Health Science Center. Young will join other speakers in pulling a drapery cord to unveil a raised-letter sign proclaiming the building’s new name.

The McKnight Brain Research Foundation’s donation of $15 million, announced in May 2000, will be matched dollar-for-dollar through the Florida Trust Fund for Major Gifts to create a $30 million endowment. From the McKnight endowment, $4 million is set aside for establishment of a faculty chair dedicated to research into memory impairments. An international search is now under way to recruit an outstanding scientist to fill this position, named for Evelyn McKnight.

The ceremony also is an occasion to highlight the institute’s rapid growth from its inception in 1992 as a nucleus of 144 UF scientists into one of the world’s most comprehensive programs of brain and spine-related research, teaching and patient care. Today, over 300 UF faculty are affiliated with the institute, along with collaborating scientists at some 65 universities and research centers in the United States and abroad.

William Luttge, executive director of the institute, announced that the naming ceremony will be preceded by a scientific seminar at noon Friday, to be led by neuroscience Professor Patricia Goldman-Rakic of Yale University---a national leader in memory research.

Goldman-Rakic’s presentation entitled “Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Neuromechanisms of Representational Memory” will take place in the brain institute’s first-floor teaching auditorium. It is open to all interested scientists and students.