New UCSB Biotech Institute to Expand Science Frontiers

By VIC COX

When the Army Research Office last month granted UCSB's new Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies $50 million over five years, news reports focused on either the amount of money–it is the largest federal research grant in campus history–or the novel applications expected from mimicking nature's materials and building techniques.

But to campus officials the funding supports, expands, and validates a foundation in basic research that has been years in the making. As Matthew Tirrell, dean of the College of Engineering and one of the architects of the proposal to the Army, said, "This grant did not come to us by chance. It's because of what we've done here already."

To Martin Moskovits, dean of mathematical, life, and physical sciences and another co-architect, the "ICB heralds the next phase of biotechnology in which biology drives technology."

Institute director Dan Morse, professor of molecular genetics and biochemistry, has built his career on understanding how creatures, such as abalone and sponges, adapt to their environments. Studying how mollusks build layered shells with bonds that break and reconnect has led to designs for new materials. More recently, surprising discoveries about how marine sponges grow silica structures suggested ways to create nonbiological semiconducting and photovoltaic materials.

Besides nurturing his respect for nature, this line of research helped Morse conceptualize what the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnology could do. "One of ICB's missions," he has said, "is to take advantage of alternative pathways for synthesis that have been honed by millennia of selection."

Aiding him and running his own projects will be chemical engineer Frank Doyle, the institute's associate director.

With partner laboratories at MIT under Angela Belcher and Caltech under David Tirrell, Morse estimated that a combined total of 60 faculty members and 200 researchers and students would be involved in the interdisciplinary ICB from the university side. Six commercial firms have also signed on as industrial partners to develop civilian and military applications for the unclassified and nonweapons-related research.

"We are delighted to be part of such a strong team with our partners at Caltech and MIT and in industry. This project will give scientists and engineers at these firms and institutions an extraordinary opportunity to conduct research at the forefront of new biotechnology," said Chancellor Henry T. Yang.

Headquarters will be at UCSB, with researchers' existing offices and labs handling the work. Future plans call for facilities in the California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI) after it is built in 2006.

ICB's research emphases fall into three categories and are headed by three scientists: sensors, electronics, and information processing, led by Guilermo Bazan, professor of chemistry and materials; biotechnological and biologically inspired routes to electronic, optical, and magnet materials, led by Morse; and biotechnological and biologically inspired new routes to information processing, led by electrical and computer engineering professors David Awschalom and Evelyn Hu.

Doyle, who is professor of chemical engineering, will address modeling of multi-scale, complex biological phenomenon and materials behavior. Also working with the institute from the Chemical Engineering Department are professor Brad Chmelka and assistant professor Patrick Daugherty.

"The world is open to us under the ICB," said Hu, acting director of the CNSI, and a long-time pioneer in molecular nanofabrication.