Ivory Tower of Science

Og · 08-13-2007, 03:06 PM

http://www.hhmi.org/janelia/

Thought you folks might be interested in this place. It's designed by the howard hughes medical institute to be the current edge of the scientific fields for understanding who and what we are. This is where mythology is generated. It's where we find intelligent individuals who are empowered to push the edges of our understanding of human consciousness (i.e. what it means to be a neural organism). This is where the true priesthood of humanity are conducting their meditations that contact them with the divine.

They have many prestigious scientists on staff and are expanding after opening in september of last year. The director of the facility is the founder and head of the fruit fly genome project, Dr. Gerry Rubin.

I recommend a primer on neuroscience, genetics, and imaging technologies:
http://www.hhmi.org/janelia/pdf/jfrc_mindbook.pdf

I also recommend watching the "discover janelia" video linked on the right of the main page.

Quote:

HHMI's Janelia Farm Research Campus is a unique, world-class biomedical research complex in Ashburn, Virginia. It is home to a broad range of scientific programs that will represent the boldest steps yet in HHMI's quest to speed the development and application of new tools for transforming the study of biology and medicine.

The planning and development of Janelia Farm represents a milestone for HMMI as it pursues the long-term objective of offering creative scientists freedom from constraints that limit their ability to do groundbreaking research. The campus and its scientific program will complement HHMI's longstanding investigator program. That program currently consists of more than 300 investigators at 67 universities throughout the United States, who have the freedom and flexibility to push the bounds of knowledge in some of the most important areas of biomedical research.

Janelia Farm is an advanced research center that will serve as an intellectual hub for up to several hundred scientists from diverse disciplines. They work together in multidisciplinary teams to solve challenging biological problems that are difficult to address in existing research settings. Such collaborative groups are "self-assembling" and not imposed in any way. This culture enhances academic freedom by allowing scientists to pursue long-term projects of high significance—projects that could not fit within the confines of a standard grant proposal.

The scientific programs at Janelia Farm are designed to further collaboration and creativity among scientists. Chemists, biochemists, neurobiologists, geneticists, physicists, computer scientists, mathematicians and engineers join biologists to develop the new tools of biomedical research. Research teams are kept small and team leaders are expected to stay actively involved in performing research, not just manage it or guide it. The architectural design of the Janelia Farm buildings and its laboratories respond to these same objectives, with both work and relaxation areas designed to promote interaction and collegiality—and discourage isolation.

Their focus is in deconstructing the way that nervous systems and neural networks encode and process information to create perception, memory, and behavior. The scientists use the model systems of the fruit fly, the mouse, and the round worm (C. Elegans). These systems offer many advantages for research.