Introduction

The SIBS-UC Berkeley Center of Molecular Life Sciences was founded in July 2004. The Center is located in the Fenglin campus of SIBS within the Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology (SIPPE). The Center includes several labs from SIPPE and from the Plant and Microbial Biology department of UC Berkeley. SIPPE is one of the leading institutes on plant physiology and environmental research in China. UC Berkeley is a world renowned university. The Plant and Microbial Biology department of UC Berkeley engages in a wide variety of research on Ecology, Evolution, Genomics, Computational Biology, Microbial Genetics and Development, Plant Genetics and Development, Host-Microbe Interactions, Physiology and Biochemistry, and Biophysics. The SIBS-UC Berkeley Center aims to provide a platform for Chinese scientists to collaborate with distinguished scientists in the world to engage in cutting edge bioscience research in China.

The Goal of the Center

The goals of the Center are to reinforce international communication and collaborations on plant science research, to establish an international plant bioscience research team, to provide graduate students and post-doctoral scientists with high-quality education and training and ultimately to extend collaborations with the research organizations in the U.S. and other countries into other fields of life science and biotechnology.

The Function of the Center

To exploit the education function through establishing a new platform for cultivating graduate students and post-doctoral scientists that explores new mechanisms for recognizing and developing talented researchers.

To enhance international academic exchanges on plant molecular sciences.

To generate high impact scientific advances.

The Research Field

At its inception, collaboration will be initiated with a scientist- to- scientist and institution- to- institution mode. Current research includes signal transduction, rice functional genomics, metabolomics and plant development. The Center seeks to achieve an open and flexible atmosphere and encourages scientists from other institutes and universities within and outside of China to become participants in this venture.