The planned Center for Integrative Biological Research will include state-of-the-art plant growth facilities. Pictured here: Student Katherine Vidal works in the Williams Conservatory.
In addition to faculty members and students coming together in planned collision spaces, lab space in the new building will be shared and flexible, inviting additional collaboration and fostering efficiency.
“It’s the way of future problem-solving,” says botany and molecular biology Professor Cynthia Weinig. “The toughest questions to answer require an integrative approach.”
“Molecular biology is currently a mile away,” adds Danny Dale, head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. “If we have molecular biology with us, it would help germinate new ideas.”
Shared lab space is also more efficient. “With a co-located center like CASI, you can have people share a liquid helium recycler, for example, instead of each person investing in one for their lab,” Dale says.
CASI will co-locate UW’s imaging scientists, their student teams and unique instrumentation in a state-of-the-art, staffed laboratory. With new and existing imaging equipment in a specialized and maintained center, these scientists can achieve unprecedented sensitivities and efficiencies in probing the fundamental interactions among atoms, molecules and cells that underlie all next-generation technologies.
“Just the act of centralizing it will greatly help,” says leadership team member and chemistry Professor Dean Roddick, adding that he recently learned about equipment on campus he wasn’t aware existed. Other equipment is unnecessarily duplicated.
“We get calls from across the state asking us to help solve problems, and we often don’t know who to direct them to because everything is so scattered,” Roddick says. “This well-defined instrumentation facility will have staff taking care of instruments and coordinating everything. That will help with outreach across the state.”
The facility will also make UW more attractive for federally funded grants. “When we’re applying for grants from organizations like the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, we can say this is a centralized, centrally supported facility that will be responsible for the oversight of such equipment,” says Donal Skinner, head of the Department of Zoology and Physiology.
“In chemistry and physics, we’re now able to visualize things at the atomic level,” he continues. “We can say that this center goes from atomic to cosmic.”
As the Science Initiative report states: “Our understanding of physical and biological structures at the atomic and molecular scale will become the basis for new generations of solar cells, nanocomputers, genetic therapies and solutions in agriculture and the environment. … These same technologies will be used in remote sensing applications to reveal the presence of organisms or pathogens in locations inaccessible to humans, such as ocean depths, volcanic basins and other planets.”
“New technology is really driving science, and technology is not cheap,” Skinner says. “Part of the Science Initiative is funding for new equipment that we don’t currently have—things like super-resolution microscopy, which several scientists are crying out for. It’s important that we get that to be able to maintain competitiveness.”
The center will host configurable, state-of-the-art rooms for existing and new microscopy and imaging instruments. This equipment requires modern infrastructure. For example, CASI will be located near the bottom of the new building.
“The reason it would be downstairs is for vibrational damping,” Dale says. “Vibrational damping is one of the things you want when you do sensitive imaging at really small and atomic levels. You don’t want to have anything moving at all. You also want to have a steady electrical supply—a constant level of voltage. Electromagnetic shielding is important as well. For example, you don’t want radio waves interfering with your detectors.”
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