Franklin M. Loew, dean of Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine, is leaving that post in January to head a new company in Cambridge, Mass., engaged in research and product development of foods for people with specific disease conditions. Provost Don M. Randel, in announcing Loew's departure, said, "Frank launched important initiatives at the College of Veterinary Medicine and we have benefited from his service. He will be missed."

Loew will be president and chief executive officer of Medical Foods, Inc., in Cambridge. His resignation as dean at Cornell is effective Jan. 31, 1997.

"I regret leaving Cornell and Ithaca after such a relatively short time, but this really represented an entrepreneurial opportunity I couldn't refuse," Loew said. "I spent eight years in Ithaca getting my undergraduate and doctoral degrees, and I'm very fond of the university and the town."

Loew said his new company will develop special food products made from existing foods recombined in new ways. It already has a dietary product available for diabetics and research is now being conducted for products for osteoarthritis and for enhancing the immune system.

Randel said he will meet with Vet College faculty in the near future to discuss the naming of an interim dean and identifying a successor to Loew.

A 1965 D.V.M. graduate of Cornell who earned his bachelor's degree here in 1961, Loew became dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine in September 1995. Loew also has a Ph.D. in nutrition from Canada's University of Saskatchewan, where he helped developed canola oil for the consumer market. He returned to Cornell as dean from Tufts University, where he had been dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine since 1982. Prior to that he was director of Comparative Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and is well-known for his research and commentary on animals and their role in society. Among his honors are Canada's Queen Elizabeth Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977 and the American Veterinary Medical Association's Charles River Prize in 1988.

While at Cornell, Loew presided over the dedication of the Veterinary College's new Veterinary Medical Center on June 7 of this year. The college's Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory worked with New York state's departments of Agriculture and Markets, Environmental Conservation and Health and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources on a mass raccoon rabies vaccination program, which Loew actively supported. During his tenure, the college offered this semester a new undergraduate course on the health and environmental effects of toxic substances, a first for Cornell and one of the few offered at any American university.