Hansjörg Wyss gives $125M to create institute - Harvard News ...

8 / Harvard University Gazette October 9-15, 2008Wyss(Continued from page 1)computer science, robotics, medicine, andsurgery from Harvard’s Schools and affiliatedhospitals, as well as from neighboringuniversities. The multidisciplinary effortwill function as the cornerstone of Harvard’sbroader efforts in bioengineering, and willbuild on many elements of the Harvard Institutefor Biologically Inspired Engineering(www.hibie.harvard.edu), which wascreated with seed support from the HarvardUniversity Science and Engineering Committeein response to a faculty-developedplan for this burgeoning discipline.Wyss’ gift will provide funds for seven endowedfaculty positions, as well as major operatingfunds for the institute. The locus ofthe Wyss Institute will be in the first sciencecomplex currently under construction onHarvard’s campus in the Allston neighborhoodof Boston.“I am humbled to have the opportunity tocontribute in a meaningful way to efforts thatI firmly believe will change the future courseof science and medicine,” Wyss said. “Littledid I dream when I began my career in engineeringthat we would reach a point whereengineers and biologists would be using nature’stemplates to create solutions to ourmedical and environmental challenges.”President Faust and Provost Steven E.Hyman, together with Dean Jeffrey Flier,Dean Michael Smith, and former DeanVenkatesh Narayanamurti — of the HarvardMedical School, Faculty of Arts and Sciences,and School of Engineering and AppliedSciences (SEAS), respectively — announcedthat Donald Ingber, Judah FolkmanProfessor of Vascular Biology at HarvardMedical School and Children’s HospitalBoston, and professor of bioengineeringat SEAS, will serve as the Wyss Institute’sfounding director.“Hansjörg Wyss’ vision for the potentialinherent in newly emerging areas of bioengineeringwill allow Harvard to integratethe worlds of biology and engineering to developnontraditional solutions to seeminglyinsurmountable challenges,” said Hyman.“Don Ingber’s leadership and commitmentto exploring these possibilities will makethis vision a reality.”Hyman noted that the establishment ofthe Wyss Institute follows Harvard’s “commitmentto the overall growth of engineeringat Harvard — exemplified by changing thestatus of the former Division of Engineeringto a School of Engineering — but in the contextof a liberal arts-focused research institution.With respect to bioengineering in particular,we are at a wonderful intellectual inflectionpoint where we’re beginning to see anew generation of bioengineering in which Ithink no one has an advantage, and where wewill provide very substantial intellectualpartnerships for such activities as our StemCell Institute and for the Systems Biology activities.Those partnerships might, for example,”he said, “enable us to convert new basicdiscoveries into a host of treatments forhuman beings suffering with illnesses.”In expressing his gratitude to Wyss, Ingbersaid that “Hansjörg Wyss is a visionaryengineer and entrepreneur who understandsthat transformative change requiresrisk-taking and breaking down boundariesamong existing disciplines. We are indebtedto him for his generosity, which will enableengineers, scientists, physicians, andindustrial collaborators to work across institutionsand disciplines at a level never beforepossible in an academic setting.”David Mooney, Gordon McKay Professorof Bioengineering at SEAS and co-chair ofHarvard’s bioengineering working group,said, “I am particularly excited that this giftwill allow us to create an interdisciplinarycommunity of scholars who will work togetherto both develop novel technologiesand create a foundation for bioengineeringbased on a fundamental knowledge of howliving systems function.”Purpose and missionThe mission of the Hansjörg Wyss Institutefor Biologically Inspired Engineering isto discover the engineering principles thatnature uses to build living things, and to harnessthese insights to create biologically inspiredmaterials, devices, and control technologiesto address unmet medical needsworldwide and bring about a more sustainableworld.Over the past decade in particular, engineering,biology, medicine, and the physicalsciences have increasingly converged.Through revolutionary advances in nanotechnology,genetics, and cell engineering,it is now possible to manipulate individualatoms, genes, molecules, and cells one at atime, and to create artificial biological systems.Simultaneous progress in materialsscience, molecular biology, and tissue engineeringhas enabled scientists to developsynthetic materials, microdevices, and computationalstrategies to manipulate cellfunction, guide tissue formation, and controlcomplex organ physiology. As a result ofthese developments, the boundary betweenliving and nonliving systems is beginning tobreak down.The Wyss Institute will leverage theseadvances and facilitate new breakthroughsby advancing the science and engineeringnecessary to develop biomimetic materials,microdevices, microrobots, and innovativedisease-reprogramming technologies thatemulate how living cells and tissues self-organizeand naturally regulate themselves. Adeeper understanding of how living systemsbuild, recycle, and control also will ultimatelylead to more efficient bioinspiredways of converting energy, controlling manufacturing,improving the environment, andcreating a more sustainable world.Faculty and programsThe Wyss Institute will form a communityof engineers, scientists, and clinicians,and provide them with the resources necessaryto pursue innovative, multidisciplinary,forward-looking research that will spur thedevelopment of transformative new technologiesand therapies.The institute will focus on fundamental,science-driven technology development inthe newly emerging fields of synthetic biology,biological control, and living materials.The Synthetic Biology Program will developgenetically engineered componentparts and circuits necessary to build programmableself-assembling nanomaterialsand integrated multifunctional living microdevices.The Biological Control Group will devisecontrol strategies that can “reboot” diseasedtissues and organs, as well as biologically inspiredalgorithms for robotic control.The Living Materials Program will harnessthe design principles that govern howliving cells, tissues, and organs exhibit theirnovel material properties and coupled biocatalyticfunctions, with the goal of fabricatingself-organizing biomimetic materialsand devices for both medical and nonmedicalapplications.The Wyss Institute will also incorporatean Advanced Technology Core, composed oftechnical experts with extensive expertisein genetic engineering, nanotechnology, microfabrication,materials science, and othercritical technologies, who move among differentfaculty laboratories pursuing problemsuntil they are solved and useful technologiesare created. The institute’s facultywill translate these new technologies intocommercial products and therapies throughpartnerships with industrial and clinicalcollaborators. The Wyss Institute also willsupport clinical faculty researchers who willidentify critical clinical challenges, conductresearch and development activities necessaryto solve these problems, and help tobring these technologies back into the clinic.Such an environment, free of disciplinaryboundaries, will foster the training of a newgeneration of students and fellows who fullyunderstand how to work across disciplines,and how to learn from the power of nature’sinnovations to advance bioengineering andmedicine.STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP