On Feb. 19, 2008, Lokey Laboratories which house the Nanoscience Research Center at the University of Oregon (UO) and affiliated with the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute, was dedicated to Lorry I. Lokey for his $25 million donation toward the project.

Lokey was a journalist-turned-philanthropist who sold his global Business Wire news service to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway in 2006. His gifts to the UO totaled $132 million, including $25 million for construction of the new $76 million Integrative Science Complex that comprises the new building and a second building scheduled to break ground in 2010.

The facility’s special capabilities will advance work related to curing human diseases such as cancer, developing cheaper solar devices, cleaning up water and the environment, and creating yet-to-be imagined products and technologies. “Nanoscience is opening up whole new research worlds that until now have been invisible,” said donor Lorry I. Lokey. “I can’t wait to see all the new discoveries that will be coming out of Oregon.”

The Lokey labs will contain more than 20 ultra-high-precision metrology, probe, lithography and bio-optics instruments not generally available except at major scientific facilities. Their value, taken together, will easily be double the cost of constructing the building.

Construction was funded by private gifts and $9.5 million in bonds and lottery funds approved by the 2003 Oregon Legislature and issued in 2005. In addition to Lokey, major donors are the Alice C. Tyler Perpetual Trust and Loomis Group of San Francisco. The first new building for the College of Arts and Sciences since 1990, the Lokey building is part of almost $250 million worth of university construction—completed or underway—made possible by Campaign Oregon: Transforming Lives.