“[There is] also a sociological goal—which is to allow larger collaborative efforts in both teaching hospitals, Harvard and MIT, to bring people together to take on challenges that can’t be taken on by individuals,” said Broad Director Eric S. Lander.

Lander said the institute will also have an impact on undergraduate education by increasing research opportunities and eventually by offering seminars and workshops through its faculty.

And the Broad Institute was just the beginning of the University’s scientific expansion.

In February, The Boston Globe reported the formation of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, which was not officially launched or announced until April.

The center was formed partially in response to the Bush administration’s more restrictive policy on federal funding for stem cell research, in the hopes that Harvard could solicit private support instead.

News of the new institute came not long after Harvard took a hit in February, when two South Korean researchers announced that they had taken therapeutic cloning to a whole new level by extracting a line of stem cells from a cloned human embryo.

“This is a field which was started in the U.S., and we are currently in the position of falling behind amongst international competitors,” said David T. Scadden, director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Regenerative Medicine and Technology and co-director of the institute. “Partly what has driven the U.S. research machine is U.S. government funding. Because scientists’ engagement in [stem cell research] is highly restricted, there has been a chill in this field, and we hope this effort will partly compensate for that by providing monetary resources for scientists.”

The Stem Cell Institute intends to unite a wide range of professional fields within the University, such as lab science, business and medicine, to develop ethically responsible stem cell therapies with a focus on degenerative diseases.

“We think that Harvard can offer particularly unique contributions to this field both because of its depth and...extraordinary people,” Scadden said. “Because this spans a wide range of disciplines, this can create new types of courses and also engage students in independent research projects.”

In September, Harvard’s Bauer Center for Genomics Research (CGR) received a five-year, $15 million grant from the National Institutes of Health endowing a Center of Excellence in Complex Biomedical Systems Research, aiming to investigate organisms’ molecular structure.

CGR Director and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Andrew W. Murray said the money will help fund the study of “modular design” in various lifeforms.

The center is unique in seeking to combine biological theory with empirical results, Murray said.

The University’s commitment to biological research was reinforced two weeks later, as Harvard Medical School (HMS) unveiled the $260-million New Research Building. The massive new research facility stands as the University’s largest structure ever—spanning over half a million square feet.

Associate Dean for Public Affairs Donald L. Gibbons said that the building will “work to foster a closer relationship between basic science research and translational research occurring at hospitals,” thereby speeding the creation of clinical applications for lab discoveries.

In October, Summers announced an interdisciplinary Center for Systems Neuroscience, another burgeoning initiative which will integrate the study of neurons, nervous systems and cognition with other fields such as psychology, biology, physics and engineering.