Signs of new era for Discovery Park at Purdue?

As part of a $2 billion fundraising campaign, Purdue University is jump starting its hub for interdisciplinary research with a new "Pillars of Excellence in Life Sciences" initiative.

The university announced Tuesday it would invest $60 million to establish the Center for Integrative Neurosciences and the Institute for Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Discovery Park to raise Purdue's national profile in the life sciences.

"It's not because we don’t have great people," President Mitch Daniels said, "but many of them are working on their own and we needed to bring about more focus."

A review committee narrowed 17 proposals down to two, one led by Donna Fekete, a professor of biological sciences, and another by Richard Kuhn, director of the Bindley Bioscience Center. Fekete and Kuhn will serve as directors of the new center and institute, respectively.