FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

Goals and Research Focus

Janelia Farm's overall objective is to pursue fundamental problems in basic biomedical research that are difficult to approach in academia or industry, because:

1. They require expertise from disparate areas.
2. They are too long-term for standard funding mechanisms.
3. They are outside the current priorities of other funding agencies.

We aim to identify important biomedical problems for which future progress requires technological innovation and then we foster the establishment of integrated teams of biologists and tool builders who seek to break through existing barriers. The scientific problems chosen drive the choices of tools to be developed; the software and instrument development activities that work in concert with, and support, the ongoing experimental work of the resident staff and visitors.

Given the size of the Janelia Farm community and the necessity to have a critical mass of individuals studying any particular research problem, we sought to identify two or three areas of concentration. After we held a series of workshops and consulted with the Advisory Committee we identified two synergistic areas that are particularly well matched to the Janelia Farm environment:

• The identification of general principles that govern how information is processed by neuronal circuits
• The development of imaging technologies and computational methods for image analysis

More detailed plans for the research program at Janelia Farm, of necessity, occur concurrently with the recruitment of the senior scientific staff. HHMI will, however, always remain open to talented individuals with innovative ideas in other areas.

 

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