What makes this research center unique, perhaps even extraordinary, is that it is completely independent of the government and the overarching bureaucracy of the National Institutes of Health—a chief source of funding for scientific research in the U.S. Janelia Farm gets no federal funding and has no affiliation with the NIH. It is part of the large and extremely wealthy Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), which comprises more than 300 researchers at 67 universities throughout the United States. It is the second-largest nonprofit foundation in North America, with an endowment of about $18 billion.
That kind of financial cushion gives Janelia Farm researchers, and those at other HHMI facilities, an autonomy that other research organizations can only envy. They are not weighed down by the 30-page grant requests, peer review processes and short-term performance pressures associated with the NIH. And with an annual operating budget of $80 million, Janelia researchers can push the bounds of knowledge in some of the most important areas of biomedical research.
“We made a decision to not take any [federal] funding for two reasons,” says Gerald Rubin, vice president and director of the Janelia Farm Research Campus and a former HHMI investigator at the University of California, Berkeley. “First, we are fortunate to have a large endowment. Second, we want to fund more risky [approaches] that have a great chance of failure—but that, were they to succeed, would lead to much greater advancements.” That approach is problematic when applying for government grants, because grant-approval committees “are conservative [and] they tend to not fund risky things.”
Research at Janelia Farm is divided into two main fields. The first is the development of higher-resolution imaging capabilities to allow scientists to better study cellular structures. This is done in two ways—by modifying computer programs to better process what is seen through microscopes, and by manipulating the organisms they are viewing to allow for a better image. The second field is neuroscience, specifically brain research in smaller animals such as fruit flies and mice. There are six research teams currently working on neuroscience projects, a total of 13 visiting and lead scientists and a number of post-doctoral students.
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