Princeton-based Institute Gets $10 Million for Systems Biology

The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, which hosted Albert Einstein as one of its first faculty members as well as a number of other scientific heavies including Robert Oppenheimer, and John von Neumann, has accepted a $10 million challenge grant from the Simons Foundation to expand the institute's three-year-old Center for Systems Biology.

Arnold Levine, a professor at the institute, has a staff of biologists, physicists and statisticians who will likely not use the funds to purchase loads of DNA sequencers, nor microarray hybridization ovens, nor even lab mice, but will likely consume lots of coffee and computer cycles on the institutes's IBM cluster in pursuing theoretical biology -- blending molecular biology, physics and mathematics.

Anyway, if they want that equipment, it is available through partnerships or with Levine's connections at Applera (he's on the board of directors of the company) or in his lab at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey in New Brunswick.

The members and faculty of the Center for Systems Biology include: Gurinder Singh Atwal, Gareth Bond of the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, Lillian Chiang, Michael Krasnitz, Harlan Robins, Jiri Vanicek and visitors Gyan Bhanot of IBM Research and Nitzan Rosenfeld of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Levine, a native New Yorker, was among a group of scientists credited with discovering the p53 tumor suppressor protein and a leader in ongoing genomic research on the protein. He is chairman of the National Institutes of Health Commission on AIDS Research and the National Academies Cancer Policy Board. He was president of The Rockefeller University from 1998 until 2002, when he resigned citing health reasons, albeit under a cloud arising from reports of an inappropriate encounter with a student.

The Institute for Advanced Study is a private organization established in 1933 on $5 million in funds donated by the Bambergers of the landmark Newark, NJ, department store.

The Simons Foundation, established in 1994 by James Simons, founder of Renaissance Technologies, and his wife Marilyn Hawrys Simons, was created to support advanced research in science and mathematics.