New institute reaches out to the world
The buzz of science at work: an architectural impression of the new LIMS building.
The year is 2013 and you are on your way from the tram to meet someone at the library on La Trobe University’s Bundoora campus. For a change, you take the first-floor walkway through a recently-opened, striking new research building.
You look straight into laboratories where people are interacting with sophisticated technology. In passing conversations you hear talk of enzyme assays, transcription factors, cancer trials and the footy, of course. A group of high school students is milling around. There’s a diff erent ambiance here – the buzz of science at work.
Welcome to the La Trobe Institute of Molecular Science (LIMS), a new breed of research institute, one that wants to reach out to the world.
The facts are mundane, but impressive. LIMS, will cost more than $97 million to construct – which includes $64.1million from the Australian Government’s Education Investment Fund, $27.2 million from the University and a substantial donation from the Jakarta-based Riady Foundation. The Institute will provide research facilities for about 220 scientists – researchers, students and support staff to help overcome a critical shortage of bioscientists in Australia.
But that’s not the prime reason the project interested the Australian Government, says the head of the School of Molecular Sciences and the driving force behind LIMS, Professor Nick Hoogenraad. ‘It will integrate science teaching, training and learning,’ he says. And that is played out in LIMS in several ways.
For instance, nestled near working research laboratories, the LIMS building will incorporate laboratories for between 300 and 400 undergraduate students. There will be common meeting rooms, as well as lecture theatres and teaching spaces. The idea is that both La Trobe and secondary school students undertaking projects at the University will be constantly bumping into researchers. In that way, science will be demystified and students inspired.
LIMS will expand the activity of the School of Molecular Sciences by 30 per cent, says Professor Hoogenraad, increasing its capacity to train early to mid-career researchers. ‘They need to learn how to run their own laboratories, train doctoral students and manage research budgets.’ In Australia, he says, for every 1,000 doctoral graduates in science, there are only about 100 positions available. LIMS aims to provide an extra 25 positions a year.
Eighteen new labs
This is also a bottleneck that the Australian Research Council’s Future Fellowships are designed to ease. These provide mid-career researchers with salary and infrastructure support for four years. Out of seven La Trobe University researchers who were successful in the first round of 200 fellowships, five will end up working at LIMS (see La Trobe gains seven Future Fellowships).
LIMS will house eighteen new molecular biology laboratories each for different research groups within the School of Molecular Sciences. Researchers will study protein structure and function, biotechnology, parasitology, genetics, chemistry, cancer research and programmed cell death, as well as teaching and learning. This last set of labs will have a strong focus on how best the facility can stimulate interest in science, at undergraduate level, in schools and in the wider community.
LIMS will also reach out to other research institutes on campus and beyond. ‘We want the building to act as a hub of research in Melbourne’s northern suburbs,’ Professor Hoogenraad says.
Widespread links
LIMS plans to share grants and collaborate with organisations such as AgriBio, the huge Centre for AgriBiosciences also being built on the Bundoora campus; the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, which already has facilities in the University’s Research and Development Park; the Cooperative Research Centres for Cancer Therapeutics and for Biomarker Translation in which the University is a partner; the agriculture biotechnology company, Hexima Limited; the Environment Protection Authority; and the Victoria Forensic Science Centre among others.
The Institute also has a signifi cant international link with the Mochtar Riady Institute for Nanotechnology, a canceroriented research institute in Jakarta. Indonesian doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows will be working at LIMS. Professor David Vaux, a director of LIMS, is now a scientifi c adviser to the Riady Institute. And the benefactors of the Riady Institute, the Riady family itself, have invested in LIMS.