The University of California, Santa Barbara, has announced two grants in support of interdisciplinary efforts to understand, and definitively explain, the most intricate biological problems and processes.

The grants include an award of $1.6 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for ongoing interdisciplinary biology initiatives at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, as well as a new summer program, the Santa Barbara Advanced School for Quantitative Biology; and one of $400,000 from the North Carolina-based Burroughs Wellcome Fund for the SBASQB initiative.

Inspired by the storied research program at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, which boasts more than fifty Nobel laureates among its past participants, SBASQB aims to advance both physics and biology by unifying their practitioners in intensive summer study. Side-by-side in lectures and in the lab, SBASQB researchers will explore subjects such as morphogenesis, embryology, microbial biology, and evolution.

"There's a lot of exciting stuff going on at the interface of traditional, hard physical sciences and biology that I think will engender what really will be a new discipline," said Joel Rothman, chair of UCSB's department of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology — and a former Woods Hole summer faculty member. "A new generation of scientists who've had strong training in both realms will ultimately be creating the new departments of quantitative biology."