Janelia Research Campus is a scientific research campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute that opened in October 2006. The campus is located in

Loudoun County, Virginia Loudoun County () is in the northern part of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. In 2020, the census returned a population of 420,959, making it Virginia's third-most populous county. Loudoun County's seat is Leesburg. Loudoun ...

, near the town of

Ashburn __NOTOC__ Ashburn may refer to: Places Canada *Ashburn, Ontario United States *Ashburn, Georgia *Ashburn, Chicago, Illinois, a community area **Ashburn (Metra), a Metra station serving the area * Ashburn, Missouri * Ashburn, Virginia, an unincorpo ...

. It is known for its scientific research and modern architecture. The current Executive Director of the laboratory is

Ronald Vale Ronald David Vale (born 1959) is a biochemist and cell biologist. He is a professor at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, University of California, San Francisco. His research is focused on motor proteins, particularly kinesi ...

, who is also a vice-president of HHMI. He succeeded Gerald M. Rubin in 2020. The campus was known as "Janelia Farm Research Campus" until 2014.

Research

Most HHMI-funded research supports investigators working at their home institution. However, some interdisciplinary problems are difficult to address in existing research settings, and Janelia was built as a separate institution to address such problems in

neurobiology Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developme ...

. As of November 2011, it has 424 employees and room for 150 more. They specifically address the identification of general principles governing information processing by neuronal circuits, and the development of imaging technologies and computational methods for image analysis. In 2017, it announced a new research area, mechanistic cognitive neuroscience. At any given time, Janelia supports several large collaborative projects to address needs for data and techniques of interest to a wide scientific community. These currently (as of 2021) include the development of large-scale neuroanatomical data for ''Drosophila'' (at the light and electron microscopy levels), a corresponding light level map of the mouse brain, improving the technology of genetically coded fluorescent sensors, and a number of smaller projects. Results include much improved fluorescent calcium sensors and the first entire full-brain image of ''Drosophila'' with neuronal resolution. The center was designed to emulate the unconstrained and collaborative environments at AT&T Bell Laboratories and

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

Laboratory of Molecular Biology The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) is a research institute in Cambridge, England, involved in the revolution in molecular biology which occurred in the 1950–60s. Since then it has remained a major medical r ...

. Researchers are on six-year contracts and fully internally funded, independent of traditional

research grant A grant is a fund given by an end entity grant – often a public body, charitable foundation, or a specialised grant-making institution – to an individual or another entity (usually, a non-profit organisation, sometimes a business or a loc ...

funding. Gerald M. Rubin was the first executive director of Janelia, and saw it from concept through construction to operation.

took over as director in early 2020. There are roughly 50 research laboratories headed by senior researchers including

Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz is a Senior Group Leader at Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus and a founding member of the Neuronal Cell Biology Program at Janelia. Previously, she was the Chief of the Section on Organelle ...

Gerry Rubin Gerald Mayer Rubin (born 1950) is an American biologist, notable for pioneering the use of transposable P elements in genetics, and for leading the public project to sequence the ''Drosophila melanogaster'' genome. Related to his genomics wor ...

Eric Betzig Robert Eric Betzig (born January 13, 1960) is an American physicist who works as a professor of physics and professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a senior fellow at the Janelia Farm Research ...

, Karel Svoboda and Barry Dickson. Previous lab heads include

Sean Eddy Sean Roberts Eddy is Professor of Molecular & Cellular Biology and of Applied Mathematics at Harvard University. Previously he was based at the Janelia Research Campus from 2006 to 2015 in Virginia. His research interests are in bioinformatics, ...

Tamir Gonen Tamir Gonen (born 1975) is an American structural biochemist and membrane biophysicist best known for his contributions to structural biology of membrane proteins, membrane biochemistry and electron cryo-microscopy (cryoEM) particularly in electr ...

Lynn Riddiford Lynn Moorhead Riddiford (born 1936) is an American entomology, entomologist and developmental biologist. She was the first female faculty member in the Harvard Biology Department where she served as an assistant and associate professor. She is an ...

, James W. Truman, and

Robert Tjian Robert Tjian (; born 1949) is a Hong Kong-born American biochemist best known for his work on eukaryotic transcription. He is currently Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley and an Investigator ...

Campus

The original Janelia Farm house is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

, and the property was purchased by HHMI from the Dutch software maker Baan Companies in December 2000. The main campus features a 900-foot (270 m) long, arc-shaped laboratory known as the Landscape Building. The building, designed by

Rafael Viñoly Rafael Viñoly Beceiro (born 1944) is a Uruguayan architect. He is the principal of Rafael Viñoly Architects, which he founded in 1983. The firm has offices in New York City, Palo Alto, London, Manchester, Abu Dhabi, and Buenos Aires. Viñ ...

, wide at the ground floor, is built into a hill and designed to be the primary research facility. A 96 room hotel for conference attendees overlooks a pond and connects to the Landscape Building via a tunnel under Helix drive. Selden Island, a former sod farm in the

Potomac River The Potomac River () drains the Mid-Atlantic United States, flowing from the Potomac Highlands into Chesapeake Bay. It is long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map. Retrieved Augu ...

was added to the campus in 2004 and is popular amongst staff for jogging and recreation. Many employees live on campus. There are two apartments buildings totaling 140 units, 34 single-family townhouses and 21 studio apartments providing housing for more than a quarter of the staff, with another 100 unit apartment under construction as of 2022. Other employees commute to Arlington on an HHMI provided shuttle bus. There are extensive fitness facilities, including a yoga studio, bouldering gym, tennis courts and a soccer field. Site and landscape design were completed by Dewberry in 2006 and include over four acres of green roof meadow plantings which blend the building into the surrounding site. In 2006, the institute hired landscape architecture firm Lewis Scully Gionet, Inc., to redo some of the previous landscape work which was completed in fall 2008 (and won an Honor Award from the Maryland and Potomac chapters of the American Society of Landscape Architects). This work includes an architectural water feature, expanded path network, and siting of multiple pieces of artwork, as well as comprehensive planting additions. Additional campus-wide landscape improvement designed by LSG Landscape Architecture followed up until now.

Research Facilities

Computational Infrastructure

The storage and computational requirements of modern neuroscience can be extremely demanding. Some two-photon microscopes can generate data at over 5GB/s. Electron microscopy

connectomics Connectomics is the production and study of connectomes: comprehensive maps of connections within an organism's nervous system. More generally, it can be thought of as the study of neuronal wiring diagrams with a focus on how structural connectivi ...

can be especially demanding. The FlyEM dataset alone is a 400TB, 34431 x 39743 x 41407 64-bit image. The analysis of a similar dataset took nearly 7000 GPU hours. Computational infrastructure available to researchers at Janelia includes a high performance 7000 core cluster, 5 petabytes of storage and an off-site data center where data is backed up nightly.

Animal Facilities

An accredited vivarium houses laboratory animals including zebrafish, mice and rats. Support staff assist with routine care, breeding and surgeries. Routine care is aided by automation. Several fly flipping robots help maintain

Drosophila ''Drosophila'' () is a genus of flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or (less frequently) pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many speci ...

stocks by transferring them to vials of fresh food. Two robot arms aid in the sanitation of mouse cages. One arm picks dirty cages from a stack and inserts them into an autoclave, the other removes sanitized cages and stacks them.

Advanced Imaging Center

Scientists from around the world can apply to run their experiments on Janelia developed microscopes at the Advanced Imaging Center.

Community involvement

Together with the

Loudoun Academy of Science The Academy of Science (AOS) is a STEM program for high school students enrolled in Loudoun County Public Schools. The program was previously located in Dominion High School. During the summer of 2018, the Academy of Science joined the Monroe Adva ...

, HHMI donates approximately $1 million annual support for science education through the Loudoun County Public School District. Janelia also hosts a quarterly public lecture series for the public.