Something extraordinary is happening at Georgia Tech.
We're transforming approaches to disease and human health
through a visionary new facility, the Engineered
Biosystems Building.
The Engineered Biosystems Building
will be a strategic resource for the biosciences sector, one
of the fastest growing industries in the state.
EBB will provide outstanding faculty, students, and staff
with the resources they require for success.
It is an investment in our future.
The Engineered Biosystems Building
has the potential to take Georgia Tech's science
and engineering programs to the next level.
It will provide an environment for discoveries, many of which
will become innovations that will save and enrich
lives for generations to come.
As a public-private partnership between the State of Georgia
and the philanthropy of individuals, corporations,
and foundations, EBB will provide 200,000 square feet
of multi-disciplinary research space.
The building has been designed to bring together scientists
and engineers to increase our understanding
of complex diseases and to generate
new drugs and new therapies for cancer, arthritis, diabetes,
Alzheimer's, and other disorders.
Georgia Tech is poised through tremendous development
over the last two years and our position as leaders
in the biosciences, bioengineering
and biotechnology, to really and truly reach a new level.
And this new facility will allow us to do that.
Building on Georgia Tech's strength
as a leader in biomedical engineering
and the biological sciences, EBB is the first phase
in a long-term plan to expand the infrastructure
and resources in these vitally important fields.
It is located at 10th Street, between State Street
and Atlantic Drive, which will reopen as a pedestrian walkway.
The facility is adjacent to the biotechnology complex, the UA
Whitaker Biomedical Engineering Building, the Ford
Environmental Science and Technology
Building, the Molecular Science and Engineering Building,
the Parker H. Petit Biotechnology Building,
and the Marcus Nanotechnology Building.
The research that will be done within the Engineered
Biosystems Building will have a significant impact
on the state's economy by driving innovation;
commercializing new devices, drugs, and technologies;
forming new companies; and creating
high-skill, high-paying jobs.
Disease is not simple.
To understand it and to beat it, we
must quantify, analyze, and manipulate
the cellular logic of life.
The research neighborhoods of the Engineered Biosystems
Building have been designed and programmed
to facilitate this vision.
One research neighborhood is Chemical Biology,
using the power of chemistry to synthesize and manipulate
biology.
The kinds of diseases that we are working on
are mainly related to the immune system, so things
like inflammation, autoimmune disease.
We also do vaccination.
But we also work in cancer.
So actually, the immune system plays a big role in cancer.
And so we're always kind of looking
at the immune and inflammatory of things.
I think it will really kind of promote
more cross-pollination of ideas.
So I'll be with a mix of chemical engineers and chemists
and biologists.
And so I think that my students will learn a lot from them
and vice versa, where when we're kind of isolated
in our own little room, we only talk to each other.
So the Engineered Biosystems Building
is going to be an incredibly exciting place, where
we have investigators from a variety of fields with students
all working together in an environment
with good support facilities to create new science.
And that mix is incredibly seductive to people like me.
We're very excited.
My students and post-docs and myself
are very excited to get in this building
and start mixing it up.
Another research neighborhood is Cell and Developmental
Bioengineering, harnessing biological principles
to design novel cell-based therapies.
We have collaborations with Hang Lu
in using her microfluidic chips to assay
the performance of T-cells that are expanded and are going
to be put back into patients for adaptive cell
therapy for cancer treatment.
Putting all of us together in a single building
with a very fluid lab environment and shared
equipment and resources I think is
going to create a very vibrant research environment.
The third research neighborhood is Systems Biology,
which ties it all together by using computation to model life
and how it fails in disease.
Cancer research at Georgia Tech, what makes it unique
is the integrative approach we're
taking, where we combine the expertise of engineers,
computer scientists, and molecular biologists
like myself.
What the new building is going to do
is bring people from these diverse fields into one place
so that we can work on a daily basis.
And so it's really going to be helpful and accelerate,
I think, the progress that we're doing in this field
With this combination of people, collaborations
can start from anywhere.
We have identified themes, programmed the building
around faculty, designed an amazing building,
a building that will inspire us to do better than we have.
It's these fundamental discoveries
that will ultimately lead to new insights about diseases
and disorders.
It's in that way of making things more efficient
and in really understanding the fundamentals
that insights for saving lives will come.
This facility will significantly enhance Georgia Tech's
commercialization efforts, stimulate job growth
in the state, and generate new start-up companies.
We invite you to be part of this exciting project.