$10 Million for Bioengineering

The School of Engineering and Applied Science will soon have a new bioengineering facility: Skirkanich Hall, courtesy of a $10 million gift from J. Peter Skirkanich W’65 and his wife, Geri. The 58,400-square-foot bioengineering laboratory facility will be located near the School of Medicine, and will house faculty, staff, students, and researchers. The gift, the largest by an individual donor in SEAS’s history, is part of the school’s $57 million bioengineering initiative.

Noting that the funding for Skirkanich Hall is the latest in a series of gifts that include the Skirkanich Professorships of Innovation and the Peter and Geri Skirkanich Endowed Scholarships for engineering undergraduates, SEAS Dean Eduardo Glandt GCh’75 Gr’77 said the Skirkaniches’ generosity and vision “have provided Penn Engineering with the opportunity to grow and prosper like never before in its history.” President Judith Rodin CW’66 called the gift a “vote of confidence in Penn’s groundbreaking bioengineering efforts,” noting that close collaboration between the engineering and medical-school faculty “provides a huge basis for these efforts.”

The gift follows a $14 million five-year Leadership Development Award from the Whitaker Foundation [“Gazetteer,” September/October] to support programs and faculty in bioengineering. Seven new faculty will be added over the next seven years in the core areas of injury bioengineering, neuroengineering, orthopedic bioengineering, and cardiovascular bioengineering, while the number of bioengineering graduate students will rise from 18 to a target level of 35 a year.

Skirkanich, a Penn trustee and overseer of SEAS, is founder and president of Fox Asset Management, a New Jersey investment-management and counseling firm.

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