CULTURE AND RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE 347
- The University of California-Berkeley’s Center for Integrative Genomics was founded in Decem-
ber 2002, supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.^15 Its mission is to bring tools from
many disciplines to bear on problems at the intersection of evolution and developmental biology. The
enabling technology for new progress in this field will be acceleration of the sequencing of species
genomes, and it is hoped to sequence 100 genomes of various species in the next 5 years.^16 The faculty
includes 20 researchers drawn from molecular cellular biology, integrative biology, statistics, plant and
microbial biology, mathematics, computer science, bioengineering, physics, paleontology, and the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The center also plans to serve an educational role, teaching or
supporting the teaching of genomic science to computer science students and computer topics to biol-
ogy students, as well as providing a center for graduate and postgraduate work. - The Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystem Research and Education (VIIBRE) at Vanderbilt
University (Nashville, Tennessee) was begun with an initial grant from Vanderbilt’s Academic Venture
Capital Fund.^17 VIIBRE has also received project-specific funding and other support from NSF, DARPA,
NIH, and other institutions, enabling it to create centers of bioengineering education technologies and
to begin research in cellular instrumentation and control, biomedical imaging, technology-guided
therapy, biological applications of nanosystems, cellular and tissue bioengineering and biotechnology,
and bioengineering education technologies. Engineers, scientists, doctors, and mathematicians conduct
research for VIIBRE; more than 20 biological physics and bioengineering faculty in Vanderbilt’s College
of Arts and Science and the Schools of Engineering and Medicine participate in the program. VIIBRE is
also developing a postdoctoral training program for physical scientists and engineers who wish to
direct their careers toward the interface between biology, medicine, engineering, and the physical
sciences. - The Computational and Systems Biology Initiative (CSBi) at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology (MIT) is a campus-wide education and research program that links biologists, computer scien-
tists, and engineers in a multidisciplinary approach to the systematic analysis of complex biological
phenomena.^18 CSBi places equal emphasis on computational and experimental methods and on mo-
lecular and systems views of biological function. CSBi includes about 80 faculty members from more
than 10 academic units in science, engineering, and management. Overall, membership in CSBi is self-
determined, based on a self-identified interest in systems biology, and it is offered to faculty and
principal investigators, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and research staff. - The Institute for Biophysical Dynamics at the University of Chicago^19 is focused on interdiscipli-
nary study of biological entities and is supported by the BWF program of Institutional Awards at the
Scientific Interface. Drawing on the biological and physical science divisions of the university, the
institute focuses on RNA-DNA structure, function, and regulation; protein dynamics, folding, and
engineering; cytoskeleton, membranes, and organelles; hormones and cell signaling; and cell growth,
death, and multicellular function. Physical scientists at the institute have expertise in macromolecular-
scale manipulation via optical tweezer and chemical means; biologically relevant model systems; mea-
surement of dynamics of macromolecules and assemblies on scales from femtoseconds to seconds;
theoretical and simulation methods; soft condensed matter theory of complex and analysis of nonlinear
dynamic phenomena. Part of the institute’s mission is to establish cross-disciplinary training programs
for students. The essential feature of the program is the placement, on a competitive basis, of predoctoral
fellows with backgrounds in the physical sciences into biological science research groups, thereby
(^15) See http://www.moore.org/grantees/grant_summaries_content.asp?Grantee=ucb_cig.
(^16) G. Shiffrar, “New Center for Integrative Genomics to Study Major Evolutionary Changes,” College News; see http://
ls.berkeley.edu/new/02/cig.html.
(^17) See http://www.vanderbilt.edu/viibre/av-goal.html and http://www.physics.vanderbilt.edu/oldpurplesite/whatshot/
newsletterwinter0102.html.
(^18) For more information, see http://csbi.mit.edu/whatis.
(^19) For more information, see http://ibd.uchicago.edu/.