What?
IB3 is a unique consortium of George Mason University, the Commonwealth of Virginia, Prince William County, and the American Type Culture Collection, the world's largest collection of living biological cultures. An entrepreneurial center in pursuit of academic excellence, the institute serves as a state-of-the-art, multiuser organization for research and development in molecular biosciences and bioinformatics. It fosters the advancement of the bioscience-based industry through scientific collaborations, offers expertise and technical service to the scientific community, and contributes to Northern Virginia's economic strength through educational programs at the undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate, and professional levels. The institute has the following mandates: to pursue multidisciplinary approaches for research in the life sciences; to integrate basic and applied research programs; to provide work force training and professional and community education; and to develop, apply, and distribute innovative biotechnology collaboratively. IB3 performs basic and applied research in three primary areas: bioinformatics and computational biology, microbial genomics and diversity, and applied cell biology and genetics.

< FONT SIZE="4">Where?
Prince William Campus, Academic Building I, 4th Floor
Phone: (703) 993-8382, Fax: (703) 993-8401
Website: www.ib3.gmu.edu

Who?
Clark Tibbetts, director of IB3 and professor of microbiology and of computational sciences and informatics; Tony Centodocati, executive associate (formerly Small Business Innovation Research program director at the National Science Foundation)

When?
The institute was founded in 1997 when the first building on the Prince William Campus opened its doors.