Friends and family will say goodbye to slain Medical Center researcher Vladimir Sled today during a private viewing at the chapel of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Doctors at HUP tried in vain to save Sled's life last Thursday night, after he was stabbed on 43rd Street and Larchwood Avenue by two men trying to steal his fiancee's purse. Sled and his fiancee, Cecelia Hagerhall, worked together as research associates in the Biophysics and Biochemistry departments. Sled was researching the process by which cells convert food to energy. Today's viewing will provide Sled's close friends and colleagues an opportunity for "private, quiet contemplation" before his body is sent home to Russia for burial at the end of the week, Biopyshics and Biochemistry Professor Leslie Dutton said. Dutton said the provost's office helped him plan the viewing and the return of Sled's body to Russia, for which the University is paying. Sled's colleagues are planning a public memorial service for early December, Dutton added. And the University will sponsor an annual lecture series in Sled's memory that will bring a "world-class" scientist to Penn to discuss cell energetics, Dutton said. The lectures will be geared to the professional scientific community. University Chaplain William Gipson, Chief of Police Operations Maureen Rush and Victim Support officials met with Sled's co-workers last Friday to brief them on the details of his death. Administrators also offered the co-workers information on University support services. The probe into Sled's murder is being directed by University Police investigators William Danks and Patricia Brennan, in conjunction with the Philadelphia Police homicide unit, Rush said. "The investigation is moving along in a very positive way," she added, declining to provide any additional information on the case. Both investigators are former Philadelphia Police homicide detectives. Brennan led the investigation of the August 1994 murder of Penn graduate student Al-Moez Alimohamed.
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