Research center dedication to feature tours, lectures

Delaware Biotechnology Institute

The new research facility of the Delaware Biotechnology Institute (DBI) will be dedicated at 10 a.m., April 26, followed by special guided tours of the new 72,000-square-foot research laboratory, located at 15 Innovation Way at the Delaware Technology Park in Newark.

Two distinguished visiting scientists, Nobel Prize-winner Norman Borlaug and Sydney Brenner, a distinguished professor at the Salk Institute of Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., will give inaugural lectures at 2 p.m. that day in Mitchell Hall. On Saturday, April 28, Craig Venter, CEO of Celera Genomics will speak at 1 p.m. at DBI. (Please see related story on page 18.)

A humanitarian and plant breeder, Borlaug, is known as the father of the "Green Revolution," and serves as director of the International Wheat Improvement program in Mexico City. Brenner also serves as president of the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley Calif, an institute founded to pursue interdisciplinary research in genomics, genetics and computational biology. Venter's company last year deciphered virtually all of the 3.1 billion chemical codes that make up human DNA.

The Delaware Biotechnology Institute is a life science-based partnership of state government, higher education and area industries. Its mission is to engage in collaborative and interdisciplinary research, to foster interdisciplinary graduate education, to incubate and nurture new start-up/spin-off businesses and to help existing businesses grow through science-based collaborative research.

In education, DBI is working with specific departments at the University to enhance and create new biotechnology offerings at the bachelor's, master's and doctoral levels. The institute has an important role to connect and leverage existing biotechnology research in the colleges of Arts and Science, Agriculture and Natural Resources, Engineering and Marine Studies.

The institute's research staff includes about 20 University of Delaware faculty and 20 professional research personnel and support staff. Broader grant-based collaboration with additional University faculty is under way. About 100 graduate and postdoctoral students complete the institute's research personnel.

The new 72,000-square-foot research facility features 23 individual laboratories, six state-of-the-art research instrumentation centers, 15 common equipment laboratories and several large and small conference areas. Rather than segregating teams by traditional discipline, at DBI the groupings are mixed to facilitate the discussions that generate new, interdisciplinary research ideas.

Photo by CAROL H. FEELEY