Институт биологических исследований Солка в Сан-Диего

Scientific research institute in San Diego, US

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is a scientific research institute located in the La Jolla community of San Diego, California, U. S. The independent, non profit institute was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine; among the founding consultants were Jacob Bronowski and Francis Crick. Construction of the research facilities began in spring of 1962. The Salk Institute consistently ranks among the top institutions in the US in terms of research output and quality in the life sciences. In 2004, the Times Higher Education Supplement ranked Salk as the world's top biomedicine research institute, and in 2009 it was ranked number one globally by ScienceWatch in the neuroscience and behavior areas. As of October 2020, the Salk Institute employs 850 researchers in 60 research groups and focuses its research in three areas: molecular biology and genetics; neurosciences; and plant biology. Research topics include aging, cancer, diabetes, birth defects, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, AIDS, and the neurobiology of American Sign Language. The March of Dimes provided the initial funding and continues to support the institute. Research is funded by a variety of public sources, such as the US National Institutes of Health and the State of California; and private organizations such as Paris based Ipsen, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Waitt Family Foundation. In addition, the internally administered Innovation Grants Program encourages cutting edge high risk research. In 2017 the Salk Institute Trustees elected former president of Booz Allen Hamilton, Daniel C. Lewis, as Board Chairman. The institute also served as the basis for Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar's 1979 book Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts.

Salk and architect Louis I. Kahn approached the city of San Diego in March 1960 about a gift of land on the Torrey Pines Mesa and were granted their request after a referendum in June 1960. The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, known today as the March of Dimes, provided the initial funding. Construction began in 1962 and a handful of researchers moved into the first laboratory in 1963. Additional buildings housing more laboratories as well as the organizational administrative offices were constructed in the 1990s, designed by Anshen & Allen. As a memorial to Jonas Salk, a golden engraving lies on the floor at the entrance to the institute: "Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality." Francis Crick held the post of J. W. Kieckhefer Distinguished Research Professor at the Salk Institute. His later research centered on theoretical neurobiology and attempts to advance the scientific study of human consciousness. He remained in this post at the Salk Institute until his death in 2004.

From April 22 to 27, 2010, the Salk Institute hosted glass sculptures by artist Dale Chihuly to celebrate 50 years of its inception. The event was underwritten by Irwin Jacobs, past chairman of the board of trustees.

The Salk Institute, La Jolla, California (1959–1965) was to be a campus composed of three clusters: meeting and conference areas, living quarters, and laboratories. Only the laboratory cluster, consisting of two parallel blocks enclosing a water garden, was built. The two laboratory blocks frame a long view of the Pacific Ocean, accentuated by a thin linear fountain that seems to reach for the horizon. The campus was designed by Louis Kahn. Salk had sought a beautiful campus in order to draw the best researchers in the world. The original buildings of the Salk Institute were designated a historical landmark in 1991. The entire site was deemed eligible by the California Historical Resources Commission in 2006 for listing in the US National Register of Historic Places. It is "arguably the defining work" of Kahn.

Jack MacAllister, FAIA, of the Kahn office, was the supervising architect and a design influence on the building that consists of two symmetric wings with a water stream flowing towards the ocean in the middle travertine paved central plaza that separates the two. In the beginning the buildings were made up of different types of concrete mixes of different color. In the basement of the complex, there are different colored water walls because Kahn was experimenting with the mixtures. The buildings themselves have been designed to promote collaboration, and thus there are no walls separating laboratories on any of the floors. The lighting fixtures on the roof slide along rails thus reflecting the collaborative and open philosophy of the Salk Institute's science. After two years of design work, and after the design had been approved and meetings with building contractors had begun, Kahn and the Salk Institute abruptly decided to reduce the number of laboratory buildings from four narrow ones to two wider ones and to increase the number of floors per building from two to three. August Komendant re engineered the structure and produced a new set of drawings with a speed that professor Leslie described as "legendary". Inside the laboratories, the ducts and vents are reinforced by concrete Vierendeel trusses supported by post tensioned columns. The authorities at the time were very cautious due to the fact that they felt these trusses would not be able to hold in case of an earthquake, but in a tour de force of structural design, Komendant was able to achieve twice the ductility that a steel frame offered. and the Razavi Newman Center for Bioinformatics. A library that houses current periodicals, some books and computers is located on the 3rd level of the west end of the North building. The Conrad T. Prebys auditorium and the Trustees' Room are located in the basement of the east buildings of the institute.

According to A. Perez, the concrete was made with volcanic ash relying on the basis of ancient Roman concrete making techniques, and as a result gives off a warm, pinkish glow. This "pozzolanic" concrete was then only vibrated as needed structurally, leaving a lightly textured wall face. The basement also houses the transgenic core. Each laboratory block has five study towers, with each tower containing four offices, except for those near the entrance to the court, which only contain two. A diagonal wall allows each of the thirty six scientists using the studies to have a view of the Pacific, and every study is fitted with a combination of operable sliding and fixed glass panels in teak wood frames. Originally the design also included living quarters and a conference building, but they were never built.

In keeping with his design and the philosophy of "served and servant spaces," and as the vast requirement for mechanical spaces were extensive, Kahn decided to create a separate service floor for them above each of the laboratories to make it easier to reconfigure individual laboratories in the future without disrupting neighboring spaces. He also designed each laboratory floor to be entirely free of internal support columns, making laboratory configuration easier. Komendant engineered the Vierendeel trusses that make this arrangement possible. These pre stressed concrete trusses are about 62 feet (19 m) long, spanning the full width of each floor and extending from the bottom of each service floor to the top. They are supported by steel cables embedded in the concrete in a curve similar to that of cables supporting a suspension bridge. Their rectangular openings, which are 6 feet (2 m) high in the center and 5 feet (2 m) at the ends, allow maintenance workers to move easily through the thicket of pipes and ducts on the service floors. The trusses impose strictly vertical loads on their support columns, to which they are attached not rigidly but with a system of slip plates and tension cables to permit small movements during moderate earthquakes.

The meeting and conference areas and the living quarters were formally designated by Kahn as the Meeting Place and Living Place, respectively. He continued to make drawings of these spaces even after their cancellation following a shortage in construction funding. Kahn's stressed importance of the Meeting Place and Living Place to the entirety of the campus plan was in accordance to the Urban Reidentification Grid concepts proposed by British architects Peter and Alison Smithson nearly a decade before, in which interconnectivity between communal activities and their respective spaces took priority. Aesthetically, the unbuilt areas combined cuboidal and cylindrical forms, distinguishing them from the laboratory cluster. The U shaped road that was part of the original plan was built and exists to this day, but its ends that would have connected the Meeting Place and Living Place to the central laboratories are left bare or occupied by a parking lot.

Although the Salk Institute is not a degree granting institution, it runs a graduate program together with the neighboring UC San Diego, and all Salk Institute professors receive adjunct appointments in the Division of Biological Sciences at UC San Diego. In addition, several faculty members are affiliated with other programs such as the Neuroscience Graduate Program and the Cellular and Molecular Medicine. The students pursue either a PhD or an MD/PhD degree.

As of 2024, the institute has one Nobel laureate on its faculty: Elizabeth Blackburn. Four of Salk's 11 Nobel laureates were deceased by 2016: Francis Crick, Robert W. Holley, Renato Dulbecco, and Sydney Brenner. Another five scientists trained at Salk have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.