NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Two new institutes aimed at bringing together public and private research efforts in epigenetics, personalized medicine, systems biology, and other areas opened Thursday on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The 300,000-square-foot Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery building in Madison houses the UW-Madison Wisconsin Institute for Discovery and the private Morgridge Institute for Research.
The costs of the project, which totaled $150 million and included $60 million for laboratories, equipment and support, was funded by UW-Madison, the State of Wisconsin, private donors John and Tashia Morgridge, and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
Researchers at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery will engage in studies focused on epigenetics, personalized diagnostic and therapeutic technologies, systems biology research, and tissue engineering studies, among others.
The Morgridge Institute for Research will serve as home for studies of virology, development of new medical devices, pharmaceutical informatics, and regenerative biology.
Support services for both institutes, which could employ up to 350 people, will include core computational technologies and education research efforts focused on helping the public learn more about science and biomedical and health management concepts.
"The institutes were created to make the UW-Madison even more competitive than it is," WARF's Managing Director Carl Gulbrandsen said in a statement. "Putting a private research institute next to a public research institute allows the public side to leverage the flexibility and nimbleness of the private side and the private side to take advantage of the impressive infrastructure and human capital available at UW-Madison."