The Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience History
The Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB) was launched in 1995 with its mission being to accelerate Georgia Tech's move into bio-related activities. The decision to establish IBB was made in 1993 by the then President Pat Crecine. When he left in 1994, however, there was some concern as to whether the new president would support the establishment of a research institute like IBB. With the arrival of Wayne Clough in September 1994 it rapidly became clear that not only would he support the concept, but he would take that commitment of support to a new level.
Prior to 1985, bioengineering and the life sciences at Georgia Tech were very fragmented, with islands of activity existing in various departments. The most notable activity was that in biochemistry in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Biology was basically a teaching unit, and there were only a handful of bioengineers, although several had already achieved national recognition. In 1985 the Bioengineering Center was formed, and this was followed in 1987 with the establishment of the Emory/Georgia Tech Biomedical Technology Research Center. Beginning in 1988, an ad-hoc group of biochemistry and bioengineering faculty began meeting on a regular basis to discuss mutual interests and to spur the development of institutional initiatives whereby bioengineering and the life sciences could become more closely associated with each other. From this ad-hoc group, a formal cross-disciplinary committee eventually emerged, and this committee's activities laid the early groundwork for development of IBB.
The Beginning of Bioengineering
In 1993 Georgia Tech received a Whitaker Foundation Biomedical Engineering Development Award. At that time only four other institutional awards had been given, and Georgia Tech's program, in receiving this award, not only was selected for further expansion, but was identified as a place that could develop one of the top programs in the country. Using the Whitaker Award, Georgia Tech developed a new bioengineering Ph.D. program, approved in late 1994 by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents. Funds from the Whitaker Award were also used to recruit new faculty and to provide graduate student support. A site visit was planned and one issue that was discussed was an organizational structure for bioengineering. The site visit committee was persistent and pressed the issue of Georgia Tech needing a bioengineering department. The response of Georgia Tech's then President Pat Crecine was maybe in the future, but not now. Crecine in fact said that "we will build bioengineering at Georgia Tech not by creating a new 'silo', but by tearing down the walls between the existing 'silos'". With this as a philosophy, the early organizational structure for bioengineering at Georgia Tech became a key component of IBB.
The Life Sciences
The life sciences at Georgia Tech has also evolved greatly since its early days. As noted earlier, the biochemistry faculty was a notable strength on campus, and in 1975 the School of Chemistry established a Biochemistry Division with a full graduate program, representing the first biosciences Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech. The number of faculty in this school doing bio-related research has expanded markedly during the past several years, with the addition of faculty active in the areas of macromolecular structure & function, biophysical and bioanalytical chemistry, bioorganic chemistry and molecular biology. Biochemistry now represents one of the strongest components within the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Concomitant with these developments, significant change has also occurred in the School of Biology, which established its first Ph.D. program in 1984. The School of Biology today is well along the path of moving from being a teaching unit to being a department with both teaching and research activities, as befitting a research university. A Biosciences Center, formerly called the Biotechnology Research Center, also developed, providing centralized instrumentation facilities and biochemical synthesis and analysis services to the faculty.
The Clough Factor
When Wayne Clough arrived as president in 1994 a critical issue was space for IBB. With the Whitaker Development Award there was a total of $3 million to renovate space for IBB in an old building. It rapidly became clear, however, that what was needed was an $8 million renovation. In the fall of 1994 President Clough decided that, in place of the renovation of space, we should build an $11 million addition on the Paul Weber Building on campus. Over the next 12 months this plan was pursued; however, in December 1995 President Clough decided that there needed to be a different plan. As he said at that time, "why would we want to build an $11 million addition on an old building in a crowded area of campus?" What emerged instead was a new biotechnology complex for Georgia Tech on the north side of campus, with the IBB building being the first one built.
The Design Theory
The IBB building opened in July 1999. It was unique on campus being designed to foster interdisciplinary research, bringing together biochemists, bioengineers, and biologists. Space was assigned not on the basis of department affiliation, but on research interests, with every research "neighborhood" having faculty and students from multiple disciplines. The IBB building has a beautiful atrium that provides the "vertical integration" necessary to facilitate interaction between the three floors of the building. This atrium is graced with a striking collection of artwork, including a 24-foot high mural that depicts the variety of cells within the human body. The atrium walls on all three floors are decorated with artwork by the late, world-famous scientific illustrator, Irving Geiss (a former Georgia Tech student), and these illustrations bring to life many structural aspects of biological macromolecules.
Parker H. Petit
In 1996, thanks to the generosity of Parker H. (Pete) Petit, a Tech alumnus, the Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience was provided with a $5 million endowment. The name of the Institute has been changed to the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience and a new chapter in the Institute's history has begun.
Growth Continues
There have been other major events in building IBB and bio-related activities at Georgia Tech. These include the establishment in 1997 of the joint Georgia Tech/Emory Wallace Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering and in 1998 of the Georgia Tech/Emory Center for the Engineering of Living Tissues (GTEC), a National Science Foundation funded Engineering Research Center. These developments not only further built the partnership with Emory, but they expanded the faculty and, with the support of the Georgia Research Alliance of GTEC, allowed for the establishment of a variety of core facilities in IBB. Additional seed grant programs have also been established to spur collaborations with colleagues at the Medical College of Georgia and at the Centers for Disease Control.
During this past year, Georgia Tech received more than $20 million in externally supported biomedical research. This has grown substantially over the last decade and will continue to grow. Active areas of research include blood flow dynamics; cellular biomechanics; imaging; medical devices; molecular genetics, as applied to both bacterial and eucaryotic cells; signal transduction for animal and plant cells; soft tissue mechanics; the synthesis and modification of small molecules, e.g. for use as enzyme inhibitors, anti-cancer and anti-AIDS compounds and neuropeptide analogs; tissue engineering; and vascular disease. With its university budget and with the income from the endowment, with the incorporation of both the Bioengineering Center and the Biosciences Center into IBB, and with the aggressive recruitment of new faculty into both the College of Engineering and the College of Science, IBB has become a great recruiting tool and the "place to be" to conduct true interdisciplinary research.