Changing the face of Charleston : The unbuilding of the Grace and Pearman Bridges
Frank's Internet Home Page
Blog: 2005
Archives of unbuilding sections
Blog: 2006
The story of building the Ravenel Bridge
Visit our
Adventures in Singapore
Click to view all web page segments
I enjoy hearing from you. If you have comments and suggestions, write me.


Unbuilding Highlights
(Apr 10)
Meeting St. Stories
(Jul 10 2006)
East Bay Stories
(Oct 10 2006)
Drum Island Stories
(Feb 17)
Pearman Bridge Stories
(Apr 3)
Grace Bridge Stories
(Apr 3)
Imposions: Prep and boom
(Mar 27)
Unbuilding Bridge Blog
(July 23 2006)
Unbuilding Challenges
(Mar 13)
Learning Links
(Feb 20)
Unbuilding Stories
(Mar 13)
Video and Sounds
(Feb 28)

September 1, 2006: Duke, NUS and Singapore
Building for Tomorrow

Many of you know that I've moved to Singapore. A well kept secret is that the training provided by PBC (Wade Watson, Marvin Tallent, Peo Halvarsson), Testa (Steve Testa, Ponch Billingsley, Michael Hebb, Jackie Foley, Richie Bagan) and Cashman (Ken Canty, Joe Duffy) is being put to use here in Singapore. Simply said, Duke, which managed to unretire me, jointly with the National University of Singapore, is building the first graduate medical school in Asia - training clinician-scientists that will be the translators between Singapore's growing investment in biomedical research and health care. What an opportunity to be part of the economic engine that is driving Singapore.

I came as faculty member #3, part of the start-up team. We are starting from scratch - and admitting our first students in the fall of 2007. We are currently leasing 5 buildings to house our learning and research laboratories and I am building an enabling IT infrastructure - promoting learning and curiosity while avoiding the forgetting curve. I am moving Gene Stead's dream into reality Our new building will be completed by the spring of 2009. In short, Duke, the National University of Singapore and Singapore are building for tomorrow. A new building, physician-scientists and energy for tomorrow

Here is our dream

Our tomorrow

and our team

Our campus

Starting with this stone

First a small ceremony: before

with hardware

and who's who

Duke Dean Sandy Williams (who's lab was 2 doors down my the lab Gus and I used in the Sands building) speaks

and the building starts, one shovel at a time

and into the micro-dump-truck

and the project starts

and then dinner

Click to view all unbuilding web page segments

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Attribution: C. Frank Starmer and Sparky Witte from http://oldcooperriverbridge.org