Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience

History

Beginning in 1985, Georgia Tech had begun to centralize its life sciences and bioengineering research by establishing the Bioengineering Center. Prior to that time, most of the research in these fields had been fragmented among various departments. In 1987, the Emory/Georgia Tech Biomedical Technology Research Center was established. By 1988, a group of professors whose research interests were in biochemistry and bioengineering began to organize to promote institutional initiatives to promote more interdisciplinary cooperation between the life science and bioengineering disciplines. In 1993, the Whitaker Foundation awarded one of five Biomedical Engineering Development Awards to Georgia Tech, largely in recognition of the cross-disciplinary cooperation that had emerged from these efforts, as the institute had been identified as having the potential for developing a top program in biomedical engineering.

The funding from the Whitaker Award spurred the development of a bioengineering PhD program at Georgia Tech, which was approved in 1994, and emphasized the need for a bioengineering department. Institute president Pat Crecine responded to the Whitaker Foundation's recommendations for such a department by stating that it was a future possibility, and that “we will build bioengineering at Georgia Tech not by creating a new ‘silo’, but by tearing down the walls between the existing ‘silos’". When G. Wayne Clough became institute president in 1994, the creation of a bioengineering department was pushed forward, though physical space for it was a concern. $3 million from the Whitaker Development Award was available to renovate space in an existing building on campus, but $8 million was needed to complete the project as planned. In the fall of 1994, President Clough decided that the space initially chosen for renovation was not adequate, and instead proposed an $11 million addition to the Weber Building. Plans for this expansion were developed and funds were raised over the next 12 months, but Clough again decided that a more ambitious approach was necessary for the new department's facilities. The revised plan was for a biotechnology complex on the north side of campus. A $5 million endowment from alumnus Parker H. Petit was instrumental in moving this much larger endeavor forward, and in recognition of Petit's gift, the bioengineering institute was named in his honor. The IBB building, located at the northeast corner of Atlantic Drive and Ferst Drive, opened in July 1999.

Research centers

The IBB serves as headquarters for a number of biomedical and bioengineering research centers. Each center receives infrastructure support and staffing resources from the IBB.

Facilities

The IBB building is a three-story, 150,000 square-foot facility located on the north side of the Georgia Tech campus. It is designed specifically to encourage and facilitate interdisciplinary research. At the core of the building is the atrium, which spans the full three stories of the structure, has a spiral staircase, and features a small restaurant, Le Petit Cafe, and artwork by Irving Geis and Karen Stoutsenberger. The high, open atrium is meant to connect the building's "research neighborhoods" of all of the different departments represented in the IBB's interdisciplinary research projects.

The IBB has 10 state-of-the-art core research facilities, which include equipment for mass spectrometry, biomechanics, biomolecular, cellular, and genome analysis, histology, magnetic resonance imaging, microcomputed tomography, microscopy and biophotonics, and pluripotent stem cell research.