$2.5 Million Grant Supports Training at Biology's Interface with Chemistry and Physics

The Rockefeller University has received a $2.5 million, five-year grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF) to establish a program designed to draw gifted young chemists, physicists and mathematicians to the frontiers of biomedical research.

The BWF award will help provide interdisciplinary training and research support for graduate students and postdoctoral investigators in the chemical and physical sciences, preparing them to apply their expertise to problems in biology and medicine. Rockefeller’s program is one of four selected from among 108 applications for a total of $10 million in support from BWF. In addition to Rockefeller, BWF awarded $2.5 million grants to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and two research consortia.

The new Rockefeller program is the latest phase in the university’s effort to build on its strength in chemistry and physics. Since 1992, Rockefeller has established 12 new laboratories working at the interface of biology, chemistry and physics. The university also created two interdisciplinary research centers: the Center for Studies in Physics and Biology and the Center for Biochemistry and Structural Biology.

“Rockefeller University has committed an extraordinary measure of its scientific and financial resources to develop programs related to chemistry and physics,” says Torsten N. Wiesel, M.D., president of the university. “We are making this investment in the belief that these disciplines are integral to future progress in biomedical research. It is very encouraging that the Burroughs Wellcome Fund shares this view, and we are grateful they have selected us as an initial participant in their innovative new program.”

BWF President Enriqueta C. Bond, Ph.D., notes, “The Fund’s initiative was developed to break down traditional barriers between disciplines and bring investigators with quantitative and theoretical training into the biological arena. We believe the efforts under way at The Rockefeller University provide a good model for what can be achieved at the interdisciplinary frontiers.”

The award from the BWF will support Rockefeller graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and provide them with opportunities for interdisciplinary research. The BWF grant also includes support for an advanced postdoctoral fellowship in computational biology.

Rockefeller’s new program is designed to help young chemists and physicists overcome hurdles they may face as they move into biology. Special courses will familiarize them with current research questions and the concepts and language of modern biology. The university also intends to create a biophysics teaching laboratory to serve as a training ground for students and postdoctoral investigators.

The interdisciplinary program is co-directed by Professor Stephen K. Burley, M.D., D.Phil., head of the Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Detlev W. Bronk Professor Albert J. Libchaber, Ph.D., head of the Laboratory of Experimental Condensed Matter Physics.

The research made possible by the BWF grant will be conducted through the university’s newly established Center for Biochemistry and Structural Biology, which Burley directs, and the Center for Studies in Physics and Biology, created in 1994 and directed by Toyota Professor Mitchell J. Feigenbaum, Ph.D.

The centers are part of the university’s initiative to promote the exchange of ideas among investigators, provide essential core facilities and offer a curriculum that gives students the requisite intellectual and technical background for interdisciplinary work.

Unlike most universities, Rockefeller does not have the formal academic departments that often create boundaries between fields. Rather, the university is a community of 77 laboratories that promotes scientific independence and creativity as well as collaborations across disciplines. Some 150 faculty members, about 270 postdoctoral fellows and associates, and approximately 130 students pursuing doctoral degrees conduct research on the campus in New York City.

The BWF is an independent private foundation that advances the medical sciences by supporting research and other scientific and educational activities. Founded in 1955 as the corporate foundation of the pharmaceutical firm Burroughs Wellcome Co., the BWF received a generous gift from its sister philanthropic foundation, the Wellcome Trust, in the United Kingdom in 1993, allowing the BWF to become fully independent from the company. In addition to Rockefeller and Caltech, the BWF awarded grants to the Program in Mathematics and Molecular Biology, a multiuniversity group based at Florida State University, and another consortium that includes the University of California-San Diego, the Scripps Research Institute, the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences and the San Diego Supercomputer Center.