Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Beckman Institute [PAGE 13]

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Karl Hess Chairman Program Committee for Materials Science, Computers and Computation

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s we have heard, the idea of the Beckman Institute has already greatly stimulated our research, and as the building rises a dream will become true for many of us. Much thought and work went into the design of the building. We are dreaming of interdisciplinary research that connects the materials and physical sciences with microelectronics. The complex of buildings that will rise here on the north campus will have large-scale integrated circuits and massive parallel computer architectures with supercomputing applications keyed to artificial intelligence and research related to the human brain. The University of Illinois has traditionally been very strong in these areas. I was attracted from 6,000 miles away and found a new home here and we hope that with the Beckman Institute these strengths will take a quantum leap forward. We are dreaming of research that truly ranges from physics to function and from molecule to mind. There is a single point in the Institute that fascinates me most—the focus of the planned research on the human being. I am convinced that the possibilities for discovery are second to no other field. It is our hope that in the future the Beckman Institute will be regarded as one of the truly great efforts related to intelligence, mankind's most precious gift.