Building on the success of the school's crime and education labs, U. of C. is adding three new initiatives starting Monday: a health lab, an energy and environment lab, and a poverty lab. They will be paid for in part by a $10 million donation from the Pritzker Foundation.
The urban labs network seeks to find effective ways of dealing with perennial big-city concerns related to ecology, poverty and wellness, then determine which programs are most successful in managing problems related to those topics. Using data helps find tangible ways to make communities better, university officials said.
"The labs are ultimately about trying to find out how to exploit the possibilities that urban issues create and also about how to best solve those challenges," said Timothy Knowles, chairman of the Urban Education Institute, who has been appointed director of the urban labs. "It's marrying rigorous inquiry with impact on the largest scale."
