University Formally Celebrates Opening of 245 Beacon St.

BY JOHN SHAKESPEAR SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

Since opening in January, Boston College’s new integrated science building, 245 Beacon Street, has quickly become one of the most popular places on campus to gather, conduct research, create, and collaborate. On September 29, hundreds of BC trustees, benefactors, administrators, faculty, and students gathered to celebrate the formal unveiling of the building, which houses the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society, the departments of Engineering and Computer Science, and the Shea Center for Entrepreneurship.

In his opening remarks, Provost and Dean of Faculties David Quigley described 245 Beacon Street as “a profound statement of institutional and collective belief, both in the potential of this building for today’s students, and in what it’s going to mean for future generations across Boston College.”

Quigley expressed the building’s interdisciplinary mission by screening a video of the late Paul Farmer, co-founder of the public health nonprofit Partners in Health, from the 2017 launch of the Schiller Institute. “Boston College can make its chief contribution in linking our understanding of science and technology to other broad categories,” Farmer said onscreen, “and in applying them in a reparative way to social problems.”

In a similar spirit, Nobel Prize-winning economist, policy entrepreneur, and New York University School of Law Professor Paul Romer’s keynote address argued that science and society are deeply intertwined.

“Science encouraged everyone to be rigorous about honesty and integrity, and that bled into all of Western culture,” said Romer. “I don’t think we should take those values for granted. I think we should work to ensure that the next generation is also acculturated into a system that cares about integrity and truth.”

DeLuca Professor of Biology and Vice Provost for Research and Academic Planning Thomas Chiles moderated a panel featuring Assistant Professor of Engineering Avneet Hira, Schiller Institute Professor of Climate Science and Society Yi Ming, and Fitzgerald Professor of Computer Science George Mohler, who use scientific methods to study societal problems ranging from inequality to global warming. Ming, who was previously the head of the Atmospheric Physics and Climate Group at a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration laboratory, said that Boston College’s human-centered approach could “make BC a true global leader in devising a holistic response to climate change.

“Climate change is an issue created and experienced by people, and it has to be solved by people,” he said, “so it makes perfect sense to put humans front and cen-

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