Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

The area around Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, is known for forging steel, not biomolecules. But this month, scientists and engineers started moving into a $100-million biotechnology facility. Its founders hope that the building will become a biotech hub for upstate New York.

The centre, which received $22.5 million from the state of New York, will contain four research constellations: biocatalysis and metabolic engineering, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, systems biology, and biocomputation and bioinformatics. It will house 400 scientists in groups led by 50–60 principal investigators.

In her inaugural address as president of the institute five years ago, physicist Shirley Jackson described biotechnology as “a field whose impact is so great, so full of promise, so well-suited to Rensselaer, that we simply must drive our stake into the ground of this new frontier.

“Why not create a biotechnology institute for Rensselaer that would encompass fundamental research, industrial partnerships, technological innovation and undergraduate and graduate education?”

Today she adds: “There was a need to bring engineering ability to bear on the life sciences,” noting, for example, the importance of modelling and imaging technologies.

Last month, the facility that Jackson envisioned, the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, opened. Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, and Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, were among those in attendance.

Since becoming chair of the biology department two years ago, centre co-director Robert Palazzo has recruited seven faculty members, and is still searching. There is stiff competition for good people in systems biology, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, he says.

Different disciplines will mingle and collaborate in an open lab space. “The goal here is to enhance serendipity,” says Palazzo. The labs will have no walls: biologists, physicists and chemical engineers will be working side by side.

The set-up will test researchers' willingness to share data. “If we get to the point where we covet information, or we hide information for our personal gain, then maybe we don't belong in that building,” Palazzo says.

→ http://www.rpi.edu/research/biotech