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 (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, 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 Theodore Lawrence Brown (born October 15, 1928) is an American scientist known for research, teaching, and writing in the field of physical inorganic chemistry, a university administrator, and a philosopher of science. In addition to his research ...

, Mort Weir, Lewis Barron and

Ned Goldwasser Edwin L. Goldwasser (March 9, 1919 — December 14, 2016) was an American physicist and Co-Founder of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the field of particle physics. He was a Professor of Physics Emeritus and former Vice Chancellor ...

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 William Tallant Greenough (October 11, 1944 – December 18, 2013) was a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Greenough was a pioneer in studies of neural development and brain plasticity. He studied learni ...

(psychology) and

Greg Stillman Greg is a masculine given name, and often a shortened form of the given name Gregory. Greg (more commonly spelled " Gregg") is also a surname. People with the name *Greg Abbott (disambiguation), multiple people * Greg Abel (born 1961/1962), Canad ...

(electrical and computer engineering) (later Karl Hess) to develop ideas for a broadly multidisciplinary research facility.

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

, 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 Detroit in 1853 by architect Sheldon Smith, SmithGroup is the longest continually operating architecture and engineering firm in the United States that ...

) and architectural designer Ralph Youngren for the project. A symbolic ground-breaking ceremony took place October 10, 1986.

, 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.

and Karl Hess 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.

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, Interim Director from 2008 to 2009;

Arthur F. Kramer Arthur F. Kramer is an academic, research scientist, and administrator in cognitive and brain health. The majority of his career has been spent at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, which he helped to establish at the Un ...

, Director from 2010 to 2016;

Jeffrey S. Moore Jeffrey Scott Moore (born 1962) is the Murchison-Mallory Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He has received awards for both teaching and research, and ...

, Director from 2016–2022; and Nadya Mason, 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 The brain is an 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 special ...

cognition Cognition refers to "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, thoug ...

, and

behavior Behavior (American English) or behaviour ( British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as w ...

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 Attention is the behavioral and cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective, while ignoring other perceivable information. William James (1890) wrote that "Att ...

, 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 is an Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate t ...

, 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 with the ma ...

. 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 fr ...

, 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. ...

, or medical optical imaging. 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 molecular engineering, self-healing materials, 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 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 * Tamer Başar, interim Director * Rashid Bashir, bionanotechnology * J. Kathryn Bock, psycholinguistics *

Stephen A. Boppart Stephen A. Boppart is a principal investigator at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he holds an Abel Bliss Professorship in engineering. He is a faculty member in th ...

, biophotonics *

Martin D. Burke Martin D. Burke (born February 5, 1976, in Westminster, Maryland) is the May and Ving Lee Professor for Chemical Innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and Associate Dean of Research in the Carle Illinois College of Medic ...

, chemistry * Kathryn B. H. Clancy, anthropology * Neal J. Cohen, memory systems and neuroscience *

Jennifer S. Cole Jennifer Sandra Cole is a professor of linguistics and Director of thProsody and Speech Dynamics Labat Northwestern University. Her research uses experimental and computational methods to study the sound structure of language. She was the founding ...

, linguistics *

Brian T. Cunningham Brian T. Cunningham is an American engineer, researcher and academic. He is a Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and a professor o ...

, biosensor engineering *

Minh Do Minh N. Do (born 1974) is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in Urbana, Illinois. He also holds positions at the Coordinated Science Laboratory, the Beckman Instit ...

, 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, organometal ...

, chemistry *

, neuroscience *

Martin Gruebele Martin Gruebele (born January 10, 1964 in Stuttgart, Germany) is a German-born American physical chemist and biophysicist who is currently James R. Eiszner Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Physics, Professor of Biophysics and Computational Biol ...

, chemistry * Karl Hess, semiconductor physics *

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

, 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, ...

, image and signal processing *

, cognitive aging and neuroscience * Paul Lauterbur, magnetic resonance imaging *

Jean-Pierre Leburton Jean-Pierre Leburton (, Liège, Belgium-) is the Gregory E. Stillman Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is also a full-time faculty member in the Nano ...

, nanotechnology *

Stephen E. Levinson Stephen E. Levinson (September 27, 1944, New York City) is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), leader of the Language Acquisition and Robotics Lab at UIUC, and a full-ti ...

, robotics *

Jennifer A. Lewis Jennifer A. Lewis (born 1964) is an American materials scientist and engineer, best known for her research on colloidal assembly of ceramics and 3D printing of functional, structural, and biological materials. In 2017, Lewis was elected as a ...

, directed assembly of soft functional materials * Zaida Luthey-Schulten, molecular dynamics simulation * Nadya Mason, physics *

, materials chemistry * Catherine J. Murphy, chemistry *

Gabriel_Popescu_(scientist) Gabriel Popescu (October 24, 1971 — June 16, 2022) was a Romanian-American optical engineer, who was the William L. Everitt Distinguished Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He was best k ...

, 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 John A. Rogers (born August 24, 1967) is a physical chemist and a materials scientist. He is currently the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Neurological Surgery at N ...

, 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 k ...

, psychology *

Nancy Sottos Nancy Sottos is an American materials science, materials scientist and professor of engineering. She is the Swanlund Endowed Chair and the head of the department of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Cha ...

, self-healing materials *

Jonathan V. Sweedler Jonathan V Sweedler (born 1961) is an American chemist specializing in bioanalytical chemistry, neurochemistry and cell to cell biology and behavior. He is the James R. Eiszner Family Endowed Chair in Chemistry at the University of Illinois at U ...

, 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 Andrew is the English form of a given name common in many countries. In the 1990s, it was among the top ten most popular names given to boys in English-speaking countries. "Andrew" is frequently shortened to "Andy" or "Drew". The word is derive ...

(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