TUESDAY • APRIL 22, 2014
CHICAGOMAROON.COM
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892
ISSUE 40 • VOLUME 125
Multi-billion dollar Diverse TEDx lineup exhorts over 800 boost to Red Line attendees to “make no little plans” Felicia Woron Maroon Contributor Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) recently announced plans to begin renovations of the Red and Purple Lines in 2017. The CTA hopes to begin an extension of the Red Line further south after these renovations are completed. The agency plans to replace parts of tracks on the Red and Purple Lines as well as build at least five miles of new track as an extension of the Red Line. The Red Line currently runs from 95th Street to the Uptown neighborhood, remaining parallel for much of its length to the Purple Line, which runs from the Loop to Wilmette, a suburb north of Evanston. In a $1.7 billion project, what CTA President Forrest Claypool described in a CTA
press release as “outdated infrastructure” will be replaced with “modern, efficient rail.” Most Red and Purple Line tracks are nearly 100 years old, and a significant amount of time and money is currently spent on repairs, hindering service greatly, according to the press release. These tracks will be replaced and five stations originally built between 1908 and 1923—Wilson, Lawrence, Argyle, Berwyn, and Bryn Mawr—will be completely rebuilt, with new elevators to improve accessibility. According to the press release, in a spot north of the Belmont station in the Lakeview neighborhood where the Red, Purple, and Brown Lines all intersect, delays of up to three minutes often occur because trains on the Red and Purple Lines must wait for Brown Line trains to cross.
The Promontory, a combination restaurant, bar, and live music venue, is expected to open at 1539 East 53rd Street, at the intersection with South Lake Park Avenue, in the coming months. The Promontory is part of the Harper Court developments undertaken by the University of Chicago to bring retailers to Hyde Park. Promontory co-owner Bruce Finkelman did not disclose an exact opening date, but said that the restaurant would “open in the early summer.” Finkelman, who owns the the Empty Bottle, a bar located in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood, partnered with the owner of Longman & Eagle, a restaurant in Logan Square, to develop the Promontory. Longman & Eagle serves American cuisine; Fin-
COURTESY OF MICHAEL CHEN
William Rhee News Staff
CTA continued on page 2
New Promontory restaurant to expand Hyde Park nightlife selection Isaac Stein Associate News Editor
Ryan Holiday, bestselling author and director of marketing at American Apparel, discusses the practical lessons provided by Stoic optimism during the TEDxUChicago event at Mandel Hall on Saturday.
kelman said the Promontory’s menu will draw from what is currently offered there. Finkelman characterized the concept of the Promontory as, in part, a response to Hyde Park’s relative lack of nightlife. “When people look at Chicago, people look at Chicago, meaning the Loop. Hyde Park was never really thought of as a destination for arts and entertainment,” Finkelman said. He suggested that the Promontory, along with other ongoing developments around 53rd Street, will make Hyde Park more lively. “It’s not that the Promontory by itself will change [Hyde Park’s entertainment scene]...you need a host of different components to build a new level of activity. The Harper Court development along with the incoming Whole Foods are a start,” Finkelman said.
The fourth annual TEDxUChicago conference was held on Saturday, April 19, drawing more than 800 people to Mandel Hall. The conference was centered on the theme “Make No Little Plans,” inspired by the famous words of Daniel Burnham, the chief architect of the 1893 World’s Fair. The student-run event brought in 11 speakers,
including former UFC middleweight champion Rich Franklin, Microsoft General Manager Khadija Mustafa, and 2012 Obama campaign National Field Director Jeremy Bird. This year’s event saw a significant increase in attendance. Last year, only an estimated 150 individuals attended the conference. This was due in part to a decreased advertising budget because of debt the organization had accrued from previous years.
In “How To Be a Loser,” mixed martial artist Rich Franklin talked about the importance of learning to deal with a loss. “There’s a potential loser in each and every one of you,” said Franklin. Franklin drew from several of his fights to discuss the discipline that losing enforces. “The fight that I [talk] about the most is one in which I made a losing effort,” said Franklin. “Losing is inevitable; make sure you have the tools in your tool-
box to deal with it.” As a former high school math teacher with a master’s degree in education from the University of Cincinnati, Franklin did not plan on a career as a fighter, even though he dreamed about it as a kid. “I tried my first fight my senior year in college as a dare from my friends, and when I found that it could turn into a full-time career, I was willing to pursue my dream,” he said. TEDx continued on page 2
IME gets new nanofabrication facility Meyer Horne Maroon Contributor A $15 million donation from the Pritzker Foundation to the University of Chicago Institute for Molecular Engineering (IME) will fund a new Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility, to be built inside the upcoming William Eckhardt Research Center. According to a University press release, the 12,000-squarefoot facility “will support work on new applications in computing, health care, communications, smart materials, and more.” The Pritzker facility is designed to supplement the nanoscale research infrastructure of the Argonne National Laboratory, and will have a focus on quantum engineering and na-
noscale manipulation and molecular design in particular. The site of the Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility, the William Eckhardt Research Center, will open in September 2015. The Facility will open several months later after being outfitted with nanofabrication equipment. The Eckhardt Research Center will also contain other facilities for the IME, offices and laboratories for the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. A major motive in building the Nanofabrication Facility was to create a space for a large “clean room” space on campus. A clean room acts as a physical room in which to contain
airborne particles and contaminants. The existence of a clean room of this particular size will promote collaboration because of its unique size. The hope is that the clean room will act as a meeting space for roundtable discussions about innovation in and around Chicago. The Eckhardt Center was designed with a facility incorporating a clean room in mind. “The building was specially engineered to account for the particular needs of a large clean room. The creation of the Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility will fulfill the vision for a multidisciplinary, state-of-the-art facility,” the press release said. IME Director Matthew Tirrell said the facility will also allow for collaboration with
industry. “The nanofabrication facility will generate partnerships with the microelectronics industry, with the medical device industry, and other types of industries making sensors and actuators,” he said in an e-mail. IME professor David Awschalom said that the Pritzker facility will encourage collaboration between the Chicago Innovation Exchange, industry groups, and the IME. “It is often the case that startup companies develop new concepts and fabricate prototypes through collaborative research projects with students and faculty,” he said in an e-mail. “The Innovation Exchange will serve as means to efficiently interface between the campus and corporate worlds.”
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