College of Engineering Magazine- Spring 2000

DeLISI IS NAMED TO NEW METCALF PROFESSORSHIP

The first Arthur G. B. Metcalf Professor in Engineering is outgoing dean Charles DeLisi, a biomedical engineering professor who is widely regarded as the father of the national Human Genome Project. In the mid-eighties, when DeLisi was heading the U.S. Department of Energy's Health and Environmental Research Programs, he "stimulated the National Institutes of Health to take [genome mapping] seriously," says George Bell, senior fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. "Without his initiative, the program might never have gotten going."
Dean Charles DeLisi (center), the first Arthur G.B. Metcalf Professor in Engineering, met up with both his predecessor and his successor at the Order of the Engineer ceremony on February 25, 2000. At left, David Campbell, incoming Engineering dean; at right, Louis Padulo, who was dean of the College from 1975 through 1986.

The professorship is one of two created by the bequest of Arthur G. B. Metcalf (SED'35, Hon.'74), longtime University benefactor and chairman of the Board of Trustees from 1976 to 1994. An inventor and teacher of the University's first engineering courses, he specified one chair in engineering and a second in the humanities, the latter named for the grandmother who inspired his lifelong interest in literature and the humanities. Award-winning poet and translator Rosanna Warren, a member of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) and University Professors (UNI) faculties, is the first Emma Ann MacLachlan Metcalf Professor in the Humanities. A third Metcalf professorship, this one in science, was created by the Board of Trustees. It will be filled by Sheldon Lee Glashow, Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist, who will hold appointments in CAS and UNI.

Metcalf resigned from BU's faculty in 1937 to found and direct the company that became Electronics Corporation of America. He was an Army Air Corps test pilot, a member of the Secretary of War's staff during World War II, and founder and chairman of the United States Strategic Institute and editor of its Strategic Review. His generosity to the University is further evidenced by the Metcalf Center for Science and Engineering, Metcalf Hall in the George Sherman Union, and the Metcalf awards for excellence in teaching.

ENG dean since 1990, DeLisi will now concentrate on research and teaching, as well as directing the College's new bioinformatics program. He ushered the College through a period of unprecedented growth, during which research funding skyrocketed, the faculty gained in number and reputation, and SAT scores of incoming freshmen rose impressively. He will hand the reins to his successor, David Campbell, in September.