Published: November 14, 2007 10:21 pm      

‘Lives will be changed’

$5.5 million gift boosts WVU’s forensics program

MORGANTOWN — West Virginia University’s newest hall was dedicated Wednesday in honor of California businessman Ming Hsieh.

A gift of $5.5 million from Hsieh and his company, Cogent Inc., made the building and much of its technology possible.

Hsieh (pronounced SHAY) is the chief executive officer, president and chairman of Cogent, a global biometric identification company that provides solutions to governments, law-enforcement agencies and commercial enterprises.

Hsieh is a native of China, and a graduate of the University of Southern California. Until last year when the plans for the gift got under way, his only real connection to West Virginia was listening to John Denver’s classic “Country Roads” while preparing to make the move to the United States.

The quality of the forensics program is what drew him to WVU, Hsieh said.

“WVU is building a world-class forensic science program,” he said. “It’s well respected. Bringing new, fresh scientists is part of the vision.”

Hsieh was joined at the hall by a host of university officials including President Mike Garrison.

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences Dean Mary Ellen Mazey thanked Hsieh for his gift, noting it will help generations of students.

“I know lives will be changed because of this gift,” she said.

Jennifer Pierce, a forensic and investigative science student, said she has dreamed of being a homicide detective since she was 14. She chose the forensic science program at WVU because it was one of only 10 programs in the country to achieve national accreditation.

Pierce noted the program was originally cramped in small classrooms and didn’t have enough equipment to support the high-technology work needed. Thanks to Hsieh’s gift, even the largest of classes has plenty of room, and there is technology to go around, she said.

“I want to personally thank you for making my dreams come true,” Pierce said.

The contributions will support several projects at WVU, including helping fund construction and outfitting of a new classroom building on the WVU Downtown Campus.

The building dedicated Wednesday will be named Ming Hsieh Hall in honor of Hsieh’s philanthropy. The Hsieh Family Foundation, of which Hsieh is founder and president, has pledged $2 million toward construction of the new building.

Located behind historic Oglebay Hall, Ming Hsieh Hall consists of four general-purpose classrooms which are fitted with the university’s new standard technology, including retractable projector screens, DVD and VHS players, and an AMX touch-screen panel that controls all the audio-visual effects in each classroom.

In addition to support for construction of Ming Hsieh Hall, The Hsieh Family Foundation has also pledged $1 million to establish two endowed funds in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. Endowed funds will create The Ming Hsieh Distinguished Professor of Forensic and Investigative Science and The Ming Hsieh Distinguished Teaching Professor of Forensic and Investigative Science.

Establishing these professorships was especially important to Hsieh since he has an interest in training, mentoring and nurturing the next generation of forensic scientists.

Cogent is providing the forensic program with new state-of-the-art forensic technology for use by faculty and students.

Cogent’s gift includes four fingerprint livescans and a fully functional Automated Fingerprint/Palm Print Identification System (AFIS) with the latest generation of Cogent’s Programmable Matching Accelerator (PMA) server.

The server is an industry-leading, high-speed fingerprint image matcher that is based on commercial off-the-shelf equipment. It is being used successfully by law-enforcement and civilian agencies around the world.

In addition, Cogent will give the program 25 AFIS workstations that provide the ability to do latent and 10 print editing and searches. The value of this in-kind gift is estimated at approximately $2.5 million.

E-mail Katie Wilson at kwilson@timeswv.com.