Stanford University Bio-X Initiative

Stanford University Bio-X Initiative is part of Stanford University and is located in the James H. Clark Center in Stanford, California, adjacent to Palo Alto and Menlo Park.

The Bio-X program at Stanford University brings clinicians, biomedical and life science researchers together with engineers, physicists and computational scientists to tackle the complexity of the body in health and disease. The major theme of Bio-X is to unlock the secrets of the human body by treating body and brain as a whole assembly of complex organ systems that interact with each other dynamically. To succeed in this mission, every tool in the scientists’ tool kit is needed, and we need to invent new tools. Faculty representing all areas of science and technology making significant discoveries, inventing and training future generations of scientists.

Rather than simply study genes, molecules, or even organs in isolation, Bio-X investigators attempt to understand entire systems within the body. More than 400 faculty members from more than 60 departments have joined Bio-X teams, and more than 90 students from across the University have received Bio-X graduate fellowships. These students and faculty work on a broad spectrum of research problems that share at least one of the four goals of Bio-X: to image and simulate life from molecules to mind, to restore the health of cells and tissues, to decode the genetics of health and disease, and to design therapeutic devices and molecular machines.

Carla J. Shatz is the Director of Bio-X since 2008.

The cornerstone of the Bio-X program is the seed grant fund Interdisciplinary Initiatives Program, IIP, which provides critical funding for early-stage, interdisciplinary research.

Bio-X also has the important goal of training a new generation of scientists and engineers who are unconstrained by traditional, discipline-bound thinking. Bio-X Fellowships encourage innovation by providing tuition and stipend to promising graduate students for up to three years while they pursue interdisciplinary research projects. This highly competitive program supports 30 fellows at a time from around the university—working to bridge gaps between biology and other disciplines, such as physics, engineering, computer science, and chemistry.

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