Pitt Chronicle

Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Governor of Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2001, will be the featured speaker at Pitt’s 2007 Commencement on April 29. The ceremony will begin at 1 p.m. in the Petersen Events Center.

During his two terms as governor, Ridge placed a high priority on university research as a key to regional economic development, launching such initiatives as the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse and the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse. Pitt was a founding member of both initiatives.

Ridge also implemented a program that continues to provide a predictable flow of state support for capital projects at Pitt and Pennsylvania’s other state-related universities, and he committed the funds that made construction of the University’s Petersen Events Center possible.

The latest edition of the U.S. News & World Report newsstand book America’s Best Graduate Schools, which goes on sale today, contains rankings that show advances in a number of Pitt graduate programs. Some of these rankings also will appear in the April 9 U.S. News & World Report magazine, also on sale at newsstands today.

Pitt alumnus Paul C. Lauterbur, who shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his part in developing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), died March 27 of kidney disease. He was 77. Most recently a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Lauterbur earned his Ph.D. in chemistry at Pitt in 1962. He also received the Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Pitt Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg during the University’s 2004 commencement ceremony. Lauterbur delivered the ceremony’s keynote address.