A big, bold vision to change the world

In 2004, Arizona State University opened the doors to a research institute like no other. The Biodesign Institute seeks to solve society’s toughest challenges guided by nature’s elegant designs. Instead of organizing by traditional academic units, its centers form around problems that need to be solved — from treating diseases to removing toxic chemicals from water.  

“Biodesign is not only dedicated to transdisciplinary research, but it’s hardwired into the institute,” says Joshua LaBaer, Biodesign’s executive director and director of the Biodesign Virginia G. Piper Center for Personalized Diagnostics. “For example, at the Center for Personalized Diagnostics, we have biologists, biochemists, software engineers, mechanical engineers and clinical informaticians all working on the early detection of disease and innovative ways to diagnose illness.” 

With glass-walled labs arranged for high visibility and ample community gathering spaces, Biodesign’s physical facilities encourage the cross-pollination of ideas that allow unexpected collaborations to bloom.  

In celebration of Biodesign’s 20th anniversary this year, we asked center directors to share their nature-inspired goals, their success stories and their experiences collaborating with students and across disciplines. Answers are edited for length and clarity. 

How is your center working to benefit society? 

“There will be 25 to 30 million people with Alzheimer’s and 15 million people with Parkinson’s worldwide by 2040. Our center is on a quest to reduce the symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and ultimately find a cure.” 

— Jeffrey Kordower, ASU-Banner Neurodegenerative Disease Research Center 

“Research into the microbiome will revolutionize medicine. We are leading research into the connection between gut bacteria and autism and obesity and other metabolic issues. Our team creates fundamental knowledge to develop microbe-based health interventions and diagnostics for better human health.” 

— Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown, Biodesign Center for Health Through Microbiomes 

“We are focused on the goal of more rapid and accurate DNA sequencing. DNA sequencing is still too expensive to be a point-of-care tool. Many treatments turn out to be strongly dependent on unique features of the disease and the patient that can only be accessed widely if individual sequencing was as cheap and rapid as a blood count.” 

— Stuart Lindsay, Biodesign Center for Single Molecule Biophysics 

What is one of your biggest success stories? 

“Our center has been very successful at translating technologies into real-world use. For instance, Erica Forzani, in collaboration with NJ Tao, developed a successful startup called Breezing that allows people to monitor their metabolic rate directly by analyzing their breath.” 

— Joshua Hihath, Biodesign Center for Bioelectronics and Biosensors 

“We have developed membrane-film technology that reduces water pollutants like nitrate and perchlorate. Since then, we’ve discovered so many other things we can do with membrane-film technology. Perhaps the most exciting of them today is that we can use it to destroy PFAS, also known as ‘forever chemicals’ because they do not break down in natural conditions but accumulate in the food chain and in humans.” 

— Bruce Rittmann, Biodesign Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology 

“Some of our notable work includes the discovery of triclocarban and triclosan as national priority pollutants. Our research was foundational to the ban of triclocarban, triclosan and 17 other antimicrobials by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2017.”

— Rolf Halden, Biodesign Center for Environmental Health Engineering 

If someone gave your center $100 million, what would you do with it? 

“We would focus on the development of ‘agnostic diagnostic’ systems that would allow us to detect and identify a variety of diseases. Developing sensors for each disease, biomarker, chemical or other target requires significant development time. Ideally, it would be possible to develop one system that could be quickly pivoted to detect lots of potential targets.” 

— Hihath 

“I would use the majority to address the enormous expense of evaluating compounds of interest as potential therapeutic agents. This includes both preclinical and clinical studies.

These activities are quite time-consuming and very expensive.”

— Sidney Hecht, Biodesign Center for Bioenergetics 

“I would use it to get our sequencing technology across the finish line and commercialize it. To make the technology fast enough and cheap enough, we need chips with hundreds of thousands of devices on them. This would require transferring the processes to a modern semiconductor fab, a very expensive process.” 

— Lindsay 

How are students involved in your work? 

“Our first compact accelerator, the CXLS, was built with 30 undergraduate and five graduate students working with five scientists on the project. Students bring new ideas and projects to the center. For example, we began a collaborative project with Mayo Clinic on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease because my graduate student, Michael Morin, contacted a clinician on his own initiative and worked weekly with children at the Phoenix Children’s Hospital who suffer from early-onset NAFLD.” 

— Petra Fromme, Biodesign Center for Applied Structural Discovery 

“When I first came to ASU, I gave a lecture in an undergraduate course and told the students that anyone who wants to do research should stop by my office. The next day, I had nine students outside my door, and I took them all. One of the reasons why I became successful is my mentor demonstrated to me how exciting science could be, and I try to provide that environment to students.” 

— Kordower 

“Most of the research in the center is conducted by graduate and undergraduate students. This involves developing research concepts and plans, developing code, running computational experiments and disseminating results.” 

— Stephanie Forrest, Biodesign Center for Biocomputing, Security and Society 

What’s an example of nature-inspired research at your center? 

“Nature utilizes materials much more efficiently than we do. For example, beehives and the thick, hard-walled succulent stems inside cacti are highly organized structures with pores, giving them large surface areas with a relatively small amount of material. We’re doing a lot of research on nonsolid objects. If I can replace half of the plastic with air, then I’ve solved half the problem.” 

— Long 

“One example is the conversion of sunlight into chemical energy, which nature invented 2.5 billion years ago. By unraveling the secret of how nature catalyzes this process driven by sunlight, we will be able to build systems that are as efficient as nature and as stable as man-made systems.” 

— Fromme 

“Our center explores deep connections between biology and computation. The problem that we face with cybersecurity is similar in many ways to the problem that immune systems solve so elegantly in nature.” 

— Forrest 

“We are developing a new field of evolutionary cell biology. Evolutionary biology and cell biology are both highly sophisticated fields, but have grown up with almost no contact, even though all things biological start at the cellular level. Many of the current threats to human society are evolutionary in nature, such as the emergence of novel pathogens, threats from invasive species, cancerous mutant cells in the human body and the ability to adapt to global warming.” 

— Michael Lynch, Biodesign Center for Mechanisms of Evolution 

How does Biodesign empower interdisciplinary collaboration? 

“Just going to get a coffee in the café often leads to new collaborative projects! One example is a new collaboration with the ASU-Banner Neurodegenerative Disease Research Center on Alzheimer’s disease. There is also a new collaboration with several Biodesign centers as well as Northern Arizona University on a DOE grant to advance carbon capture technology. All these new projects will make use of our center’s technologies.” 

— Fromme 

“Most of the external collaborations I have had involved joint efforts in which both parties contributed their established skills to an extension of their ongoing efforts. In comparison, my most successful collaborations at ASU have been more broadly based and taken us into entirely new areas. I believe this reflects Biodesign’s interdisciplinary research culture.” 

— Hecht 

“Nothing that we’ve accomplished at the center would be possible without the approach of housing multiple disciplines under one roof. I think this has encouraged encounters and collaborations that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. One example is the work we do with the Biodesign Center for Biocomputing, Security and Society. Stephanie Forrest approached us and together we started to investigate the privacy concerns of wastewater monitoring.”

— Halden  

What’s your favorite thing about working at Biodesign? 

“It is easy to say ‘we do risky science,’ but quite another to say, ‘and we tolerate failure when the risks don’t pan out.’ Higher-risk research implies that we will often fail, and providing an environment that understands that is key to catalyzing great discoveries.” 

— Forrest 

“Biodesign is an absolutely gorgeous facility with very passionate people and a really big, bold vision to change the world. It’s that kind of excitement that makes it really cool to come to work in the morning.”

— Long  

“My favorite thing about working at Biodesign is the feeling that if you can dream it, you can do it.” 

— Krajmalnik-Brown