Research Centers and Partners
See Also: Faculty List | Research and Adjunct Professors | Faculty Awards
The BCMB Department is engaged in a broad range of interdisciplinary activities. So there are a variety of connections across the UT campus, at Oak Ridge National Lab and beyond. Some examples of important research centers and partners with which BCMB researchers interact are given below:
Tennessee Plant Research Center (PRC)
The strong research area in plant sciences in BCMB provides a natural opportunity to build bridges to the UT Institute of Agriculture. Recently, faculty working in plant sciences from many departments across the main campus and the agricultural campus as well as ORNL have joined forces to establish the Tennessee Plant Research Center (PRC). Establishedearly in 2010, the PRC brings plant scientists together for monthly colloquia with both internal and external speakers. Faculty in the PRC are interested in combining resources to advance training, particularly at the graduate level, to promote plant science in the Knoxville area. Dr. Andreas Nebenführ is the BCMB liaison to the PRC and also serves as co-director of the PRC together with Dr. Neal Stewart (Dept. Plant Sciences).
The UT/ORNL Center for Molecular Biophysics (CMB)
The CMB was established in 2006 by Jeremy Smith and his colleagues. The principal scientists in the group include Dr. Smith, Jerome Baudry, Hong Guo, and Tongye Shen from BCMB and Xiaolin Cheng, an ORNL scientist who is a joint faculty with BCMB. The CMB goal is to study and understand the function of biologically relevant molecular systems by employing high-performance computer simulations in combination with biophysical experiments. Project highlights include work on protein dynamics, catalysis, petascale molecular dynamics, the cellulosome, dynamic visualization of lignocellulose and biomass recalcitrance. The center takes advantage of the computing power unique to UTK and ORNL, which house two of the top five performing computers in the world at present.
The National Institute for Computational Science (NICS)
The computational power on which the CMB draws comes from several resources, including the high-performing computer power housed at ORNL through Jaguar, which is the primary research computer at the ORNL Leadership Computing Center, and Kraken, which is managed through NICS. NICS was established at the University of Tennessee as a product of a $65M Track 2B award by the National Science Foundation. The mission of NICS is to enable the scientific discoveries of researchers nationwide by providing leading-edge computational resources and education, outreach and training.
The National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS)
UTK is home to NIMBioS, an institute dedicated to promoting research at the interface of biology and mathematics. The institute was established in 2008 when the University was chosen as the site for a new center in an open competition with major research entities across the country for the 5-year $16M award. Dr. Lou Gross (Math, EEB) is the Director of NIMBioS, and Dr. Peterson serves on the leadership team for the institute in the role of Associate Director for Graduate Education. NIMBioS arises from a new collaboration between the National Science Foundation and the other agency sponsors, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The ongoing challenges of maintaining a safe food supply, avoiding economic disruptions caused by emerging infectious diseases, and evaluating methods to better manage the inevitable disease outbreaks that develop due to globalization, may best be investigated by integrating modeling and mathematics with the biological studies which are critical to the formulation of public policy to address these challenges. NIMBioS focuses the talents of researchers from around the world to collaborate across disciplinary boundaries and take an integrative approach to investigate these challenges to linked natural and human social systems. NIMBioS is a national resource, hosting teams of scientists from across the world in working groups and workshops who submit proposals that are reviewed on a competitive basis.
Tennessee Solar Conversation and Storage Using Outreach, Research and Education (TN-SCORE)
An NSF EPSCoR Track 1 (research infrastructure building) grant has been awarded to UT, with David Millhorn (Vice President for Research, BCMB Department) as the PI. The grant is a $24M award ($20M from NSF and $4M in cost sharing) over five years. The overall theme of TN-SCORE has been separated into three main scientific thrust teams: Thrust 1.Advanced Solar Conversion and Innovation, Thrust 2. Components and Devices for Energy Storage and Conversion, and Thrust 3. Nanostructures for Enhancing Energy Efficiency. Dr. Barry Bruce from BCMB is one of the three thrust leaders, heading Thrust 1 with a program entitled “TASCIT- Tennessee Advanced Solar Conversion and Innovation Team”. The overall theme of the proposal is “building a culture of collaboration,” and it involves more than 50 faculty members from ten institutions across the state.
The Sustainable Energy and Education Research Center (SEERC)
The primary mission of SEERC is to promote research and education in the area of sustainable energy. SEERC is primarily housed in the College of Engineering, with Dr. Bamin Khomami as the Director of the Center. Barry Bruce is the Associate Director of the center, representing the College of Arts and Sciences and Bioenergy/Biofuels efforts. SEERC aims to leverage partnerships with ORNL the Department of Energy and with many institutes across campus in its research, education and innovation efforts. The strategy adopted by SEERC is the strategic investment of resources to fund, seed research and educational projects, as well as infrastructure development to further strengthen existing areas of excellence in sustainable energy and/or promote new directions.
Neutron Facilities and the UT/ORNL Joint Institute for Neutron Sciences (JINS)
ORNL houses two facilities for performing experiments with neutrons that are valuable for biologists, and particularly for several in the BCMB Department who have worked at these facilities (Drs. Baudry, Jain, Peterson, Serpersu, and Smith). These are the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR), housing instruments for small-angle neutron scattering experiments, and the Spallation Neuron Source (SNS), where a workstation for neutron crystallography for biological samples is scheduled for completion in 2012. Other instruments at the SNS are used for a variety of measurements on biological samples at various time and length scales. Access to these instruments and education/research revolving around neutron science is supported by the activities of an institute formed between UT and ORNL, the Joint Institute for Neutron Sciences (JINS). JINS was conceived to serve as an intellectual hub for the neutron science community and to enhance and support research at SNS and HFIR.
The Center for Structural Molecular Biology (CSMB)
Neutron Sciences are also promoted through activities at the Center for Structural Molecular Biology at ORNL. The CSMB, which is spearheaded by Dr. Dean Myles at ORNL, is dedicated to developing instrumentation and methods for determining the three-dimensional structures of proteins, nucleic acids (DNA/RNA) and their higher order complexes. The tools of the CSMB will help understand how these macromolecular systems are formed and how they interact with other systems in living cells. The focus of the CSMB is to bridge the information gap between cellular function and the molecular mechanisms that drive it. The suite of tools being developed by the CSMB includes SANS capabilities, isotope labeling laboratories, computational techniques for analyzing SANS data, and neutron diffraction, spectroscopy and scattering tools.
The UT Obesity Research Center (UTORC)
UTORC was established in 2007 at UTK to do our part locally in developing interdisciplinary approaches for the prevention and treatment of overweight and obesity that will decrease obesity-related complications, and help people achieve long-term maintenance of a healthy weight. The main purpose of the center is to foster collaborations across campus and provide a mechanism for developing program projects in obesity research and place University of Tennessee faculty in a better position to be able to compete for external funding. The Directors of UTORC are Dr. Naima Moustaid-Moussa (Animal Science) and Dr. David Bassett (Exercise, Sport and Leisure Studies). The center brings together faculty members from many disciplines, to generate ideas for large research projects in order to better position them to compete for funding. Through organized symposia and graduate colloquia, the center works to promote scientific exchanges in obesity research and develop a strong and nationally recognized research in obesity.