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

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

dedicated to interdisciplinary research. A gift from scientist, businessman, and philanthropist Arnold O. Beckman (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 John Edward Cribbet (February 21, 1918 – May 23, 2009) was a well-known legal scholar, dean of the University of Illinois College of Law, and chancellor of the University of Illinois. Biography Cribbet was born in Findlay, Illinois, just outsi ...

, 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 o ...

) to develop ideas for a broadly multidisciplinary research facility.

Thomas Eugene Everhart Thomas Eugene Everhart FREng (born February 15, 1932, in Kansas City, Missouri) is an American university president, educator, and physicist. His area of expertise is the physics of electron beams. Together with Richard F. M. Thornley he design ...

, 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 SmithGroup is an international architectural, engineering and planning firm. Established in 1853 by architect Sheldon Smith, SmithGroup is the longest continually operating architecture and engineering firm in the United States that is not a w ...

) 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 (born April 1, 1932, in Prague, Czech Republic) is a professor emeritus of chemistry in the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Jiri Jonas is considered a pioneer in the use of magnetic resonan ...

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-Champaig ...

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

Nadya Mason Nadya Mason is dean of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at The University of Chicago, receiving that appointment in October 2023. Prior to joining The University of Chicago, she was the Rosalyn Sussman Yalow Professor of Physics at ...

, Director from 2022-2023. Catherine J. Murphy was interim Director from 2023-2024, and

Stephen Maren Stephen Andrew Maren (born November 7, 1967) is an American behavioral neuroscientist investigating the brain mechanisms of emotional memory, particularly the role context plays in the behavioral expression of fear. He has discovered brain circui ...

was named Director in July 2024. According to the 2022–2023 Annual Report of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, about 200 faculty members, 500 graduate students, 325 undergraduate students, 80 postdocs and 150 staff members conduct research or work at the Beckman Institute.

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 The brain is an organ (biology), organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It consists of nervous tissue and is typically located in the head (cephalization), usually near organs for ...

cognition Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

, and

behavior Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions of Individual, individuals, organisms, systems or Artificial intelligence, artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or or ...

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 remembe ...

attention Attention or focus, is the concentration of awareness on some phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli. It is the selective concentration on discrete information, either subjectively or objectively. William James (1890) wrote that "Atte ...

, and

decision making In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be either ra ...

. It also includes technology research such as

computer vision Computer vision tasks include methods for image sensor, acquiring, Image processing, processing, Image analysis, analyzing, and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical ...

, event-related optical signal 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. It is also ...

. 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 with frequency, frequencies greater than 20 Hertz, kilohertz. This frequency is the approximate upper audible hearing range, limit of human hearing in healthy young adults. The physical principles of acoustic waves apply ...

magnetic resonance imaging Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to generate pictures of the anatomy and the physiological processes inside the body. MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and ...

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. ...

, or

medical optical imaging Medical optical imaging is the use of light as an investigational imaging technique for medical applications, pioneered by American Physical Chemist Britton Chance. Examples include optical microscopy, spectroscopy, endoscopy, scanning laser opht ...

. 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 materials, substances that have the built-in ability to automatically repair damages to themselves without any external diagnosis of the problem or human intervention. Generally, mate ...

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 (not to be confused with CHARMM). It is noted for its ...

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 Narendra Ahuja is an Indian-American computer scientist and the Donald Biggar Willett Professor Emeritus in Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. His research primarily concerns computer vision and pattern recognition. ...

, 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 Urbana-Champaign. He was the Executive Associate Dean and Chief Diversity Of ...

, bionanotechnology *

J. Kathryn Bock J. Kathryn Bock is currently professor of psychology and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Champaign, Illinois, where she conducts research in the Language Production Laboratory at the Beckman Institute for Advance ...

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

, semiconductor physics *

Thomas Huang Thomas Shi-Tao Huang (, June 26, 1936 – April 25, 2020) was a Chinese-born Taiwanese-American computer scientist and electrical engineer. He was a researcher and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). ...

, image formation and processing *

Douglas L. Jones Douglas L. Jones is the William L. Everitt Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Biography Jones received the BSEE, MSEE, and Ph.D. degrees from Rice University in 1983, 198 ...

, 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) possi ...

, 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 * Liviu Mirica, chemistry * Jeffrey S. Moore, materials chemistry * Catherine J. Murphy, chemistry * Gabriel Popescu, 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 Justin S. Rhodes is an American neuroscientist and a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is affiliated with the Neuroscience Program, Program of Ecology, Evolution, & Conservation Biology ...

, neurobiology * Klaus Schulten, 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 kno ...

, psychology * Nancy Sottos, self-healing materials * Jonathan V. Sweedler, analytical chemistry * Scott R. White, 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 Institute Open House

The Beckman Institute Open House is an annual event held in conjunction with UIUC Engineering Open House.

References

External links

* {{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 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign