Abbreviation | ICB |
---|---|
Formation | 2003 |
Founded at | University of California, Santa Barbara |
Purpose | biotechnology |
The Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies (ICB) is a University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) primarily funded by the United States Army. Headquartered at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and in collaboration with MIT, Caltech and industry partners, ICB's interdisciplinary approach to research aims to enhance military technology by transforming biological systems into technological applications. [1]
UARC proposed the ICB's development in January 2003 and the institute came to fruition by August 22, 2003 with the US Army's announcement to grant $50 million for military research. [2] [3] Since that time, the ICB has remained intact and expanded to include 60 faculty members and 150 researchers that have completed over 135 research projects.
The ICB's research aim is to model biological mechanisms for use in military materials and tools. Quoting Army Research Office program manager Robert Campbell, "The inspiration for the ICB comes from the fact that biology uses different mechanisms to produce materials and integrated circuits for high-performance sensing, computing and information processing, and actuation than are presently used in human manufacturing." [4] Much research is focused on evaluating biomolecular sensors, bio-inspired materials and energy, biodiscovery tools, bio-inspired network science, and cognitive neuroscience through the disciplines of cellular and molecular biology, materials science, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and psychology.
Francis J. Doyle III, ICB Director [5]
Scott Grafton, ICB Associate Director
David Gay, ICB Director of Technology
Robert Kokoska, ICB Army Program Manager [6]
Daniel Morse, Founding Director [7]
The ICB is affiliated with the following: [8]
In 2008, S.B. Antiwar protested ICB's annual military conference by blocking UCSB's Pardall Tunnel, the main path and bikeway between the campus and city of Isla Vista. Between 200 and 300 students and community members participated and a total of three arrests were made. The conference area was then secured by campus police and the event continued as planned. [9] The ICB has continued to hold conferences at UCSB each year without incident.
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A University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) is a strategic United States Department of Defense (DoD) research center associated with a university. UARCs are formally established by the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. UARCs were developed to ensure that essential engineering and technology capabilities of particular importance to the DoD are maintained. They have many similarities with Federally Funded Research and Development Centers, including sole source funding under the authority of
. However, UARCs are allowed to compete for other science and technology work, except when it is prohibited by their contracts.The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, often referred to as the Broad Institute, is a biomedical and genomic research center located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The institute is independently governed and supported as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research organization under the name Broad Institute Inc., and it partners with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the five Harvard teaching hospitals.
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