The Rockefeller University and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., have established a joint initiative in biology supported by a $10 million gift from The Simons Foundation, it was announced today. The initiative, which builds on the complementary strengths of the Institute and the University, will involve biologists, mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists exploring quantitative and theoretical approaches to biological problems.
To develop interactions and collaborations, the Institute for Advanced Study and Rockefeller will make joint appointments, including visiting professors and graduate and postdoctoral fellows, fund early stage high-risk projects and set up an annual joint conference as well as regular seminars, workshops and lectures.
"This unique initiative, which draws on the strength of both Rockefeller and the Institute for Advanced Study, will open new doors to studying complex biological problems," says Paul Nurse, Rockefeller University's president. "By combining techniques from several different scientific disciplines, the effort will be well positioned to make breakthroughs in how we understand key processes of life and disease."
Peter Goddard, Director of the Institute for Advanced Study, says, "The Institute is pleased to join with Rockefeller University in this initiative, which will foster important and distinctive contributions to research in biology. This collaboration will enable us to expand greatly our work in this field, and will help the Institute to continue to train the next generation of life scientists."
Rockefeller University's Stanislas Leibler, head of the Laboratory of Living Matter at Rockefeller, has been appointed to a joint professorship as part of this initiative. Leibler is interested in the quantitative description of biological systems, both on cellular and population levels. He has held academic appointments at the Centre d'Études de Saclay, France, and Princeton University before joining Rockefeller University in 2001 as Gladys T. Perkin Professor. In 2003, he was appointed one of the first Tri-Institutional professors at Rockefeller, Weill Cornell Medical College and the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research. He also is a member of the university's Center for Studies in Physics and Biology, which promotes experimental collaborations to study both the physical properties of biological systems and the application of physical techniques to the modeling of biological networks.
A series of annual conferences will be established as part of this initiative, to be named in honor of Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and Rockefeller's president from 1978 to 1990, and mathematician John von Neumann, a faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1933 to 1957. Lederberg's and von Neumann's work on artificial intelligence, expert systems, self-reproduction and computational aspects of biological systems will serve as a model for this initiative to explore quantitative and theoretical approaches in biology.
About The Rockefeller University
The Rockefeller University is a world-renowned center for research and graduate education in the biomedical sciences, chemistry, bioinformatics and physics. The university's 70 laboratories conduct both clinical and basic research and study a diverse range of biological and biomedical problems with the mission of improving the understanding of life for the benefit of humanity. Twenty-three scientists associated with the university have won Nobel Prizes, 20 have won Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards and 13 have garnered the National Medal of Science, the highest science award given by the United States. Since the institution's founding in 1901, Rockefeller University has been the site of many important scientific breakthroughs. Rockefeller scientists, for example, established that DNA is the chemical basis of heredity, discovered blood groups, showed that viruses can cause cancer, founded the modern field of cell biology, worked out the structure of antibodies, developed methadone maintenance for people addicted to heroin, devised the AIDS "cocktail" drug therapy, and identified the weight-regulating hormone leptin.
About The Simons Center for Systems Biology at the Institute for Advanced Study
The Simons Center for Systems Biology at the Institute for Advanced Study, established in 2004 and named in honor of a major gift from The Simons Foundation, aims to foster original theoretical research in the fields of systems biology using genetic, molecular and evolutionary approaches, and in some cases focusing on disease processes. The Center, led by School of Natural Sciences Professor Arnold J. Levine, also creates opportunities for individuals working in systems biology to meet, hold seminars and symposia, collaborate in research and interact on a regular basis. Major areas of study in the Center relate to the genomic evolution and behavior of RNA viruses such as influenza, herpes and human immunodeficiency viruses, and the molecular and cellular origins of cancer, autism and other diseases. The Institute for Advanced Study, founded in 1930, is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute exists to encourage and support fundamental research in the sciences and humanities – the original, often speculative, thinking that produces advances in knowledge that change the way we understand the world. It provides for the mentoring of scholars by Faculty, and it offers all who work there the freedom to undertake research that will make significant contributions in any of the broad range of fields in the sciences and humanities studied at the Institute.