Strategic Priority #5

Accelerate our Reach and Impact in Frontier Areas of Science Where Columbia Can Innovate and Lead

GOAL: We will leverage our eminence in the sciences to pursue new interdisciplinary projects, expand collaborations in the New York City area, and build the infrastructure to enable new scientific discovery.

STRATEGIES

• Leverage our historic strengths in biology, chemistry, and earth and environmental sciences to build a new interdisciplinary focus on biochemistry, genomics, ecology and climate.
• Look beyond A&S to fuel basic science through collaborations with the most innovative applied fields rooted and arising in the NYC science community. 
• Transform key spaces and seed key projects for science that will move us forward beyond the single investigator—core facilities; cross-school institutes; center grants.
• Launch a broad-based, A&S-led initiative on computation, data, and machine learning in the basic sciences.
• Develop seed grants for high-risk, high-reward ideas at early stages of research.
• Complete the last mile of our investments in quantum physics.

SPOTLIGHT INITIATIVES

Precision Biomolecular Characterization Facility

In 2025, a newly renovated Arts and Sciences core facility will open to faculty and researchers across the University. The Precision Biomolecular Characterization Facility (PBCF) will provide a range of cutting-edge equipment and instruments, including a new high-precision microscope, to enable new advances in biophysical and biochemical research and spur new discoveries into the structure and behavior of some of the smallest components of life.  It is a model for the kind of ambitious science we will pursue through shared facilities, advanced technology, and interdisciplinary collaboration.