The Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology is a unit of the

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univers ...

dedicated to interdisciplinary research. A gift from scientist, businessman, and philanthropist

Arnold O. Beckman Arnold Orville Beckman (April 10, 1900 – May 18, 2004) was an American chemist, inventor, investor, and philanthropist. While a professor at California Institute of Technology, he founded Beckman Instruments based on his 1934 invention of th ...

(1900–2004) and his wife Mabel (1900–1989) led to the building of the Institute which opened in 1989. It is one of five institutions which receive support from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation on an ongoing basis. Current research at Beckman involves the areas of

molecular engineering Molecular engineering is an emerging field of study concerned with the design and testing of molecular properties, behavior and interactions in order to assemble better materials, systems, and processes for specific functions. This approach, in whi ...

, intelligent systems, and

imaging science Imaging is the representation or reproduction of an object's form; especially a visual representation (i.e., the formation of an image). Imaging technology is the application of materials and methods to create, preserve, or duplicate images. ...

. Researchers in these areas work across traditional academic boundaries in scientific projects that can lead to the development of real-world applications in medicine, industry, electronics, and human health across the lifespan.

History

The Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology has its origins in a 1983 meeting in which chancellor John E. Cribbet, Theodore L. Brown, Mort Weir, Lewis Barron and Ned Goldwasser strategized about approaching private sources to fund new large-scale science projects and centers on the University of Illinois campus. Two committees were formed, chaired by William T. Greenough (psychology) and Greg Stillman (electrical and computer engineering) (later

Karl Hess Karl Hess (born Carl Hess III; May 25, 1923 – April 22, 1994) was an American speechwriter and author. He was also a political philosopher, editor, welder, motorcycle racer, tax resister, and libertarian activist. His career included stints on ...

) to develop ideas for a broadly multidisciplinary research facility. Thomas Eugene Everhart, who succeeded Cribbet as chancellor in 1984, and Sarah Wasserman, assistant vice-chancellor for research, helped Brown and Weir to review and develop the final proposal. The committee reports were combined to propose an institute with two main divisions, a center for biology, behavior, and cognition, and another center for materials science, computers and computation. The institution's research program would explore intelligence in the broadest possible sense, extending "from artificial systems invented by man to natural systems found in the biological world". Arnold Beckman was approached with the proposal by university president Stanley lkenberry, Lew Barron, and Mort Weir. Beckman estimated that the proposal would require the unprecedented sum of $50 million. On October 5, 1985, the university officially announced that Arnold and Mabel Beckman had made the largest donation ever given to a public university at that time – $40M, with a $10M supplement from the state of Illinois – to build a research center at Illinois that would encourage scientists and engineers from different disciplines to work together. By December 10, 1985, the university had chosen the architectural firm of Smith, Hinchman and Grylls (SH&G) (now SmithGroup) and architectural designer Ralph Youngren for the project. A symbolic ground-breaking ceremony took place October 10, 1986. Theodore L. Brown, who had been actively involved in the project as vice chancellor for research and graduate dean, became the first director of the institute as of March 12, 1987. William T. Greenough and

became associate directors, with half-time appointments, in the fall of 1987. By December 1988, the building was sufficiently advanced that faculty groups could begin to move in. Administrative offices were temporarily located in the basement. An official inauguration ceremony was held on April 7, 1989, to open the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology as one of the first research centers in the world dedicated to interdisciplinary research. Theodore L. Brown was succeeded as director in the summer of 1993 by chemist Jiri Jonas. Jiri Jonas was the Beckman Institute Director from 1993 to 2001; he was succeeded by Pierre Wiltzius, Beckman Institute Director from 2001 to 2008;

Tamer Başar Mustafa Tamer Başar (born January 19, 1946) is a control and game theorist who is the ''Swanlund Endowed Chair'' and Center for Advanced Study Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, ...

, Interim Director from 2008 to 2009; Arthur F. Kramer, Director from 2010 to 2016; Jeffrey S. Moore, Director from 2016–2022; and

Nadya Mason Nadya Mason is the Rosalyn Sussman Yalow Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As a condensed matter experimentalist, she works on the quantum limits of low-dimensional systems. Mason is the Director of the Illin ...

, Director as of 2022. According to the 2013–2014 Annual Report of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, more than 200 faculty members from 11 colleges and over 50 different departments are involved in the Beckman Institute. They work with postdoctoral and research scientists, and graduate and undergraduate students doing science in a wide variety of areas.

Research

Scientific exploration at the Beckman Institute is centered around three broad research themes: Intelligent Systems, Integrative Imaging, and Molecular Science and Engineering. The Intelligent Systems research theme (IntelSys) is a merging of two older themes (Biological Intelligence and Human-Computer Intelligent Interaction). The theme is comprehensive in scope, as researchers seek to understand the

brain A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a ve ...

, cognition, and behavior from the molecular and cellular levels to higher cognitive functions such as

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered ...

, attention, and decision making. It also includes technology research such as computer vision,

event-related optical signal Event-related optical signal (EROS) is a neuroimaging technique that uses infrared light through optical fibers to measure changes in optical properties of active areas of the cerebral cortex. The fast optical signal (EROS) measures changes in infr ...

and

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the ...

. The Integrative Imaging (IntIm) research theme is geared toward the interdisciplinary discovery of fundamental principles in imaging science, and developing new technologies for the next generation of imaging instruments and novel techniques for basic and translational research. Many researchers in the IntIm theme are working on biomedical applications, using

ultrasound Ultrasound is sound waves with frequencies higher than the upper audible limit of human hearing. Ultrasound is not different from "normal" (audible) sound in its physical properties, except that humans cannot hear it. This limit varies ...

, magnetic resonance imaging,

biophotonics The term biophotonics denotes a combination of biology and photonics, with photonics being the science and technology of generation, manipulation, and detection of photons, quantum units of light. Photonics is related to electronics and photons. P ...

, or

medical optical imaging Medical optical imaging is the use of light as an investigational imaging technique for medical applications. Examples include optical microscopy, spectroscopy, endoscopy, scanning laser ophthalmoscopy, laser Doppler imaging, and optical coherence ...

. The Molecular Science and Engineering (MSE) research theme brings together scientists from biology, engineering, physics and chemistry, to study molecular structures and processes. The MSE research portfolio includes

self-healing material Self-healing materials are artificial or synthetically created substances that have the built-in ability to automatically repair damages to themselves without any external diagnosis of the problem or human intervention. Generally, materials will ...

s, and computational

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. ...

(such as

NAMD Nanoscale Molecular Dynamics (NAMD, formerly Not Another Molecular Dynamics Program) is computer software for molecular dynamics simulation, written using the Charm++ parallel programming model. It is noted for its parallel efficiency and is often ...

Notable faculty

Tenure-track or tenured faculty members of the

are eligible to become members of the Beckman Institute. Prominent members of the Beckman Institute have included: * Narendra Ahuja, computer vision *

, interim Director *

Rashid Bashir Rashid Bashir is Dean of The Grainger College of Engineering, Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering and Professor of Bioengineering, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was the Executive Associate Dean and Chief Diversity O ...

, bionanotechnology * J. Kathryn Bock, psycholinguistics * Stephen A. Boppart, biophotonics * Martin D. Burke, chemistry * Kathryn B. H. Clancy, anthropology * Neal J. Cohen, memory systems and neuroscience * Jennifer S. Cole, linguistics * Brian T. Cunningham, biosensor engineering * Minh Do, signal and image processing *

Gregory S. Girolami Gregory S. Girolami (born October 16, 1956) is the William H. and Janet G. Lycan Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the synthesis, properties, and reactivity of new inorganic, organometall ...

, chemistry * William T. Greenough, neuroscience * Martin Gruebele, chemistry *

, semiconductor physics * Thomas Huang, image formation and processing * Douglas L. Jones, image and signal processing * Arthur F. Kramer, cognitive aging and neuroscience *

Paul Lauterbur Paul Christian Lauterbur (May 6, 1929 – March 27, 2007) was an American chemist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2003 with Peter Mansfield for his work which made the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) poss ...

, magnetic resonance imaging * Jean-Pierre Leburton, nanotechnology * Stephen E. Levinson, robotics * Jennifer A. Lewis, directed assembly of soft functional materials * Zaida Luthey-Schulten, molecular dynamics simulation *

, physics * Jeffrey S. Moore, materials chemistry * Catherine J. Murphy, chemistry * Gabriel_Popescu_(scientist), quantitative phase imaging *

Richard Powers Richard Powers (born June 18, 1957) is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novel '' The Echo Maker'' won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. novelist * John A. Rogers, soft electronics * Justin Rhodes, neurobiology *

Klaus Schulten Klaus Schulten (January 12, 1947 – October 31, 2016) was a German-American computational biophysicist and the Swanlund Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Schulten used supercomputing techniques to app ...

, computational biophysics *

Daniel Simons Daniel James Simons (born 1969) is an experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois. Simons is best know ...

, psychology * Nancy Sottos, self-healing materials * Jonathan V. Sweedler, analytical chemistry *

Scott R. White Scott Ray White (February 14, 1963 – May 28, 2018) was an American engineer. Born in Kansas City, Missouri on February 14, 1963, and raised in Harrisonville, Missouri, White obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Missour ...

, self-healing materials

Beckman Fellowships

The Beckman Institute offers a variety of fellowship programs, which enable researchers to work for short periods of time at the Institute. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowships are awarded to Beckman scholars who receive 3-year appointments, including both a stipend and a research budget. The first Beckman postdoctoral scholars were Efrat Shimshoni (condensed matter physics) and Andrew Nobel (information theory and statistics). Beckman Graduate Fellowships are awarded to students who are working at the master's or doctorate level. Beckman Senior Fellowships are awarded to senior faculty from other institutions. Beckman Fellowships administered through the Beckman Institute should not be confused with those administered through the Center for Advanced Study (CAS) at the University of Urbana-Champaign. The CAS awards a series of Beckman Fellowships and Beckman Research Awards which support faculty at Urbana-Champaign in their research activities. These awards were funded through an endowment from Arnold and Mabel Beckman, given in the late 1970s, prior to the establishment of the Beckman Institute. They are administered separately and are awarded throughout the university, not just within the sciences.

Research services

The Beckman Institute hosts two major core research facilities. The Biomedical Imaging Center (BIC) includes the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Laboratory, the Molecular Imaging Laboratory, and the Ultrasound Imaging Laboratory. The Imaging Technology Group includes the Microscopy Suite and the Visualization Laboratory.

Beckman Open House

The Beckman Open House is a biennial event that is held in conjunction with UIUC Engineering Open House which is usually the second weekend in March.

References

External links

Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The Beckman Foundation's list of Beckman Institutes and Center
{{Authority control University and college laboratories in the United States Buildings and structures of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Research institutes established in 1989 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign centers and institutes Buildings and structures in Urbana, Illinois