348 CATALYZING INQUIRY
formalizing interdisciplinary connections. Fellows participate in new “translational core courses,” es-
tablishing a common culture, and select an individualized program of additional coursework tailored to
their research and career goals. They also take a lead role in a weekly seminar-discussion program.
Finally, in some cases centers are not associated with a specific university at all. Their purpose can
be to consolidate resources on a larger scale or simply to provide a congenial intellectual home for like-
minded individuals. Three nonuniversity centers are described below, again as illustrations only:
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is a private research institution on Long Island, New
York, that employs more than 800 people (300 classified as scientists) and has an annual budget of over
$120 million. CSHL was established in 1889 with missions in biological research and education. In 1993,
it began the annual Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology. As of 1998, it offers a
Ph.D. program. Its prime research focus is on cancer biology, although it also has strong programs in
plant genetics, genomics and bioinformatics, and neurobiology. In genomics, its researchers are investi-
gating genome structure, sequencing, pattern recognition, gene expression, prediction of protein struc-
ture and function, and other related topics. A large portion of its funding comes from revenue, such as
publications, intellectual property licensing, and events fees. - The Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) is a private nonprofit institution founded in 2000 in
Seattle, Washington, by Leroy Hood, Alan Aderem, and Ruedi Aebersold.^20 With a mission of applying
systems biology to problems of human health such as cancer, diabetes, and diseases of the immune
system, its 11 faculty members and 170 staff have expertise in fields such as immunity, proteomics,
genomics, computer science, biotechnology, and biophysics. Since its founding, ISB has received its
funding predominantly from federal grants, although also including private, corporate, and foundation
support and industrial collaboration.^21 ISB has also spun out a number of companies to pursue com-
mercialization opportunities around cell sorting and cancer therapies, in addition to cooperating in a
multiventure capital firm-backed incubator for new biotechnology start-ups.^22 Of particular signifi-
cance is the report that Hood left the University of Washington after he failed to convince it to establish
a systems biology research center; he later said that he thought “the university culture and bureaucracy
just could not have sufficient flexibility” to respond to the opportunity that post-Human Genome
Project systems biology presented.^23 - The Sloan-Swartz Centers for Theoretical Neurobiology were created in 1994 under the auspices
of the Sloan Foundation.^24 Located at Brandeis University, California Institute of Technology, New
York University, Salk Institute, and University of California, San Francisco, the Swartz Foundation also
made major grants to these centers in 2000. These centers place experimentalists and theoreticians from
physics, mathematics, and computer sciences in experimental brain research laboratories, where they
learn about neuroscience and apply their vantage point and nontraditional skills to cooperative lines of
inquiry. The centers have investigated topics such as gain fields and gain control in nerve circuits,
neural coding and information theory, neural population coding and response, natural field analysis,
and short-term memory.
(^20) See http://www.systemsbiology.org.
(^21) L. Timmerman, “Progress, Not Profit: Nonprofit Biotech Research Groups Grow in Size, Influence,” Seattle Times, August 4,
2003.
(^22) J. Cook, “Accelerator Aims to Lure, Nurture Best Ideas in Biotech,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 23, 2003.
(^23) “Under Biology’s Hood,” Technology Review, September 2001, available at http://www.techreview.com/articles/01/09/
qa0901.asp.
(^24) See http://www.swartzneuro.org/research_a.asp and http://www.sloan.org/programs/scitech_supresearch.shtml.