Janelia Research Campus is a scientific research campus of the

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization headquartered in Chevy Chase, Maryland with additional facilities in Ashburn, Virginia. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American busin ...

that opened in October 2006. The campus is located in

Loudoun County, Virginia Loudoun County () is in the northern part of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. In 2020, the census returned a population of 420,959, making it Virginia's third-most populous county. The county seat is Leesburg. Loudoun County ...

, near the town of

Ashburn __NOTOC__ Ashburn may refer to: Places Canada * Ashburn, Ontario United States * Ashburn, Georgia *Ashburn, Chicago, Illinois, a community area ** Ashburn station (Illinois), a Metra station serving the area * Ashburn, Missouri *Ashburn, Virginia ...

. It is known for its scientific research and modern architecture. The current executive director of the laboratory is Nelson Spruston, who is also a vice-president of HHMI. He succeeded

Ronald Vale Ronald David Vale ForMemRS (born 1959) is an American biochemist and cell biologist. He is a Janelia Senior Group Leader at HHMI and an emeritus professor at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, University of California, San F ...

in 2024, who in turn succeeded the initial director Gerald M. Rubin in 2020. The campus was known as "Janelia Farm Research Campus" until 2014.

Research

Most HHMI-funded research supports investigators working at their home institutions. However, some interdisciplinary problems are difficult to address in existing research settings, and Janelia was built as a separate institution to address such problems in

neurobiology Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, ...

. As of February 2025, it had 650 employees. They specifically address the identification of general principles governing information processing by neuronal circuits, and the development of imaging technologies and computational methods for

image analysis Image analysis or imagery analysis is the extraction of meaningful information from images; mainly from digital images by means of digital image processing techniques. Image analysis tasks can be as simple as reading barcode, bar coded tags or a ...

. In 2017, it announced a new research area, mechanistic cognitive neuroscience. At any given time, Janelia supports several large collaborative projects to address needs for data and techniques of interest to a wide scientific community. As of 2021, these included the development of large-scale neuroanatomical data for ''Drosophila'' (at the light and electron microscopy levels), a corresponding light level map of the mouse brain, improving the technology of genetically coded fluorescent sensors, and a number of smaller projects. Results include much improved fluorescent calcium sensors and the first entire full-brain image of ''Drosophila'' with neuronal resolution. The center was designed to emulate the unconstrained and collaborative environments at

AT&T Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

and

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

Laboratory of Molecular Biology The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) is a research institute in Cambridge, England, involved in the revolution in molecular biology which occurred in the 1950–60s. Since then it has remained a major medical r ...

. Researchers are on six-year contracts and fully internally funded, independent of traditional

research grant A grant is a fund given by a person or organization, often a public body, charitable foundation, a specialised grant-making institution, or in some cases a business with a corporate social responsibility mission, to an individual or another ent ...

funding. Gerald M. Rubin was the first executive director of Janelia, and saw it from concept through construction to operation.

took over as director in early 2020, followed by Nelson Spruston in 2024. There are roughly fifty research laboratories headed by senior researchers including Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz,

Gerry Rubin Gerald Mayer Rubin (born 1950) is an American biologist, notable for pioneering the use of transposable P elements in genetics, and for leading the public project to sequence the ''Drosophila melanogaster'' genome. Related to his genomics wo ...

, Luke Lavis, and

Eric Betzig Robert Eric Betzig (born January 13, 1960) is an American physicist who works as a professor of physics and professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a senior fellow at the Janelia Farm Resear ...

. Previous lab heads include Karel Svoboda,

Barry Dickson Barry J. Dickson (born 14 August 1962) is an Australian neurobiologist who studies the development of neuronal networks in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Dickson is a group leader at the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medi ...

Sean Eddy Sean Roberts Eddy is a professor of molecular and cellular biology and of applied mathematics at Harvard University. Previously he was based at the Janelia Research Campus from 2006 to 2015 in Virginia. His research interests are in bioinformatics ...

Tamir Gonen Tamir Gonen (born 1975) is an American structural biochemist and membrane biophysicist best known for his contributions to structural biology of membrane proteins, membrane biochemistry and electron cryo-microscopy (cryoEM) particularly in electr ...

, Lynn Riddiford, James W. Truman, and

Robert Tjian Robert Tjian (; born 1949) is a Hong Kong-born American biochemist best known for his work on eukaryotic transcription. He is currently professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California, Berkeley and an Investigator ...

Education and community involvement

Janelia's mission also includes education as well as research. Programs include high school, undergraduate, and graduate student programs, the latter in cooperation with

Johns Hopkins Johns Hopkins (May 19, 1795 – December 24, 1873) was an American merchant, investor, and philanthropist. Born on a plantation, he left his home to start a career at the age of 17, and settled in Baltimore, Maryland, where he remained for mos ...

. Together with the Loudoun Academy of Science, HHMI donates approximately $1 million annually to support science education throughout Loudoun County Public Schools. Janelia also hosts a quarterly lecture series for members of the public.

Research Facilities

Computational infrastructure

The storage and computational requirements of modern neuroscience can be extremely demanding. Some two-photon microscopes can generate data at over 5 GB/s.

Electron microscopy An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. It uses electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing i ...

connectomics Connectomics is the production and study of connectomes, which are comprehensive maps of connections within an organism's nervous system. Study of neuronal wiring diagrams looks at how they contribute to the health and behavior of an organism. ...

can be especially demanding. The FlyEM dataset alone is a 400 TB, 34431 x 39743 x 41407 64-bit image. The analysis of a similar dataset took nearly 7000 GPU hours. Computational infrastructure available to researchers at Janelia includes a high performance 6000 core

cluster may refer to: Science and technology Astronomy * Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft * Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study the magnetosphere * Asteroid cluster, a small ...

with 300 GPUs, 25 petabytes of storage and an off-site data center where data is backed up nightly.

Animal facilities

An accredited vivarium houses laboratory animals including zebrafish, mice, and rats. Support staff assist with routine care, breeding, and surgeries. Routine care is aided by automation. Several fly flipping robots help maintain ''

Drosophila ''Drosophila'' (), from Ancient Greek δρόσος (''drósos''), meaning "dew", and φίλος (''phílos''), meaning "loving", is a genus of fly, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or p ...

'' stocks by transferring them to vials of fresh food. Two robot arms aid in the sanitation of mouse cages. One arm picks dirty cages from a stack and inserts them into an autoclave, the other removes sanitized cages and stacks them.

Advanced Imaging Center

Scientists from around the world can apply to run their experiments on Janelia developed microscopes (both optical and EM) at the Advanced Imaging Center.

Instrument design and construction

Janelia hosts a facility jET, for Janelia Experimental Technology, which designs, builds, and tests commercially unavailable instruments, tools, and software.

Campus

The original Janelia Farm house is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

, and the property was purchased by HHMI from the Dutch software maker Baan Companies in December 2000. The main campus features a 900-foot (270 m) long, arc-shaped laboratory known as the Landscape Building. The building, designed by

Rafael Viñoly Rafael Viñoly Beceiro (1 June 1944 – 2 March 2023) was an Uruguayan-born architect based in New York. He was the principal of Rafael Viñoly Architects, which he founded in 1983. The firm has offices in New York City, Palo Alto, London, Ma ...

, wide at the ground floor, is built into a hill and designed to be the primary research facility. A 96 room hotel for conference attendees overlooks a pond and connects to the Landscape Building via a tunnel under Helix drive. Selden Island, a former sod farm in the

Potomac River The Potomac River () is in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States and flows from the Potomac Highlands in West Virginia to Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. It is long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography D ...

was added to the campus in 2004 and is popular amongst staff for jogging and recreation. Many employees live on campus. There are three apartment buildings totaling 240 units—34 single-family townhouses and 21 studio apartments providing housing for more than a quarter of the staff. Other employees commute to

Arlington Arlington most often refers to: *Arlington, Virginia **Arlington National Cemetery, a United States military cemetery *Arlington, Texas Arlington may also refer to: Places Australia *Arlington light rail station, on the Inner West Light Rail in S ...

on an HHMI provided shuttle bus. There are extensive fitness facilities, including a yoga studio, bouldering gym, tennis courts, and a soccer field. Site and landscape design were completed by Dewberry in 2006 and include over four acres of green roof meadow plantings which blend the building into the surrounding site. In 2006, the institute hired landscape architecture firm Lewis Scully Gionet, Inc., to redo some of the previous landscape work which was completed in fall 2008 (and won an Honor Award from the Maryland and Potomac chapters of the American Society of Landscape Architects). This work includes an architectural water feature, expanded path network, and siting of multiple pieces of artwork, as well as comprehensive planting additions. Additional campus-wide landscape improvement designed by LSG Landscape Architecture followed up until now.