Building at Penn State Named to Honor Plant Pathologist

Eva J. Pell, former dean of the Gradaute School and senior vice president for research at Pennsylvania State University, was honored by having her name attached to a new building on campus. The board of trustees approved the naming of the 20,000-square-foot science building as the Eva J. Pell Laboratory for Advance Biological Research. The new laboratory will house Penn State’s programs in immunology and infectious disease research. The completion of the new building is scheduled for next summer.

Dr. Pell was on the faculty at Penn State for 36 years until she left in 2009 to become under secretary for science at the Smithsonian Institution. A expert in plant pathology, she has authored or co-authored more than 100 scholarly articles and received research grants in excess of $7 million.

Dr. Pell is a graduate of the City College of New York. She earned a Ph.D. in plant biology at Rutgers University.