Dr. Joachim Messing
Director Waksman Institute
Mission Statement
The Waksman Institute's mission is to conduct research in microbial molecular genetics, developmental molecular genetics,
plant molecular genetics, and structural and computational biology. We also provide a catalyst for general university initiatives, a life
science infrastructure, undergraduate and graduate education, and a public service function for the state.
Organization
The Waksman Institute is a research unit of the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers University, The State University of New
Jersey. It receives a budget from the state to support the recruitment and appointment of faculty on separate budgeted research (SBR) lines that
are split with instructional (IDR) lines from the decanal units of the campus. This facilitates faculty appointments in different disciplines,
and enriches the interdisciplinary research unique to the institute. The decanal units simultaneously receive an enhanced instructional and service
program, in addition to their traditional departmental tasks consistent with the mission of a state university. The faculty of the institute also
participate in the various graduate programs, thereby becoming fully integrated into the state university system.
Facilities at the Waksman Institute include:
A reading room with over 20,000 volumes on microbiology, biochemistry, and genetics; the Molecular Biology Computing
Laboratory serving 203 users and 157 workstations, maintaining 20 servers (Apple Xserve, IBM Linux, SGI Origin, Sun v880) with a combined total of
15.9 TB (15,900 GB), holding site licenses for DNA sequence analysis packages that include FGENESH, GCG/SeqWeb, Jellyfish, Lasergene, and Vector NTI;
a confocal microscopy suite for molecular and cellular biology; a modern computerized cell and cell products fermentation facility that has completed
equipment validation and prepared standard operating procedures for such equipment. This validation allows us to meet requests for the manufacture of
preclinical products under current Good Laboratory Practices (cGLP) and current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) compliance.
