Roy Carver, Jr. and Dr. William Duax were contemporaries at the University of Iowa.  Roy is the son of Roy J. Carver, Sr., a successful engineer, entrepreneur, and industrialist who founded Bandag Tires and developed a profitable business.  Roy Sr. generously funded the construction of the basketball auditorium at the University of Iowa that bears the Carver name, and he set up a charitable foundation that awards funds for biomedical research in Iowa where the Carver name has become a household word.

When Bill Duax told Roy Jr. about the high school student-training program in structural biology and bioinformatics at the Hauptman-Woodward Institute, he remarked that new computers were needed.  Because Roy has a long-standing interest in education, he asked how much money was needed and proceeded to write a personal check for $10,000 immediately.

On a later occasion, Roy made a commitment to provide three annual gifts of $100,000 to endow a Duax Chair in X-ray Crystallography at HWI.  Additional contributions to the Duax endowment fund are now being sought.  Contributions to the Duax Chair will support the scientific training of some of the brightest high school students in the greater Buffalo area — young people who are Buffalo’s future.