Gus Gurley, co-founder of Santa Barbara based Digital Instruments (DI), endowed a chair at the KITP with a generous gift of $1M. The Susan F. Gurley Chair in Theoretical Physics and Biology honors the entrepreneur’s mother. The first holder of the endowed chair is KITP permanent member Boris Shraiman.
David Gross, KITP Director, said, “I cannot emphasize enough how crucial Gus’s gift is to our pioneering efforts to give direction to the newly emerging field of theoretical (or quantitative) biology. The Susan F. Gurley Chair is a powerful incentive that enables us to draw to the KITP leading scientific talent at the interface between physics and biology. Boris Shraiman is just such a scientist. He is immensely creative—one of the deepest thinking and most theoretically skilled of the leaders in this dynamic new field.
Gurley was appointed a KITP Senior Fellow in 2007 “in recognition of his pivotal role in helping to establish the new field of theoretical biology at the KITP.”
Gus Gurley and Boris Shraiman