About KGI:
Keck Graduate Institute is dedicated to education and research aimed at translating into practice, for the benefit of society, the power and potential of the life sciences.  While KGI is a graduate institution, it is part of the predominantly undergraduate Claremont Consortium, which is composed of the undergraduate colleges Pomona, Scripps, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, and Pitzer, and Claremont Graduate University.  Faculty members at KGI have incorporated undergraduate students from the beginning as a valuable part of their research efforts.

Our two-year Master of Bioscience (MBS) degree program addresses the challenges of developing leaders in the biosciences who have solid science and engineering skills as well as a strong grasp of management, ethics and policy issues. KGI's curriculum is case-based and interdisciplinary, with a 70% focus on biological systems, bioengineering and computational biology and a 30% focus on management, ethics and policy. KGI has 24 regular faculty members, including the President and the Dean, in addition to 10 adjunct professors. 85 students are currently enrolled in the MBS program. KGI launched a PhD program building on the MBS degree in 2006, and is offering a PhD program in computational biology jointly with the Claremont Graduate University since 2004.

Keck Graduate Institute's 18-acre complex, located just southeast of the other Claremont College campuses houses newly renovated laboratories equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation. In addition to the faculty member's individual research space, KGI maintains a number of core facilities providing services and instrumentation essential to a particular research area, which are all accessible to undergraduate students working at KGI.

I think that this was one of the most rewarding academic experiences I have had. I had access to great facilities, knowledgeable advisors, and got to research a really interesting project. ~ Chris Nolan, REU 2004

My lab was brand new when I walked in the door and it was exciting to be part of something new and really experimental.
~ Erin Kirkbride, REU 2003

The facilities in our lab were very up-to-date as compared to other labs in which I have researched.
~ Heather White, REU 2003

The Bioengineering Core Facility is equipped to support the laboratory components of the MBS curriculum and faculty research in microfluidics, nanotechnology, bioMEMS; biomaterials as well as metabolic engineering and controls. Equipment in the facility includes a Veeco BioScope atomic force microscope (Nanoscope IIIa controller) integrated with a Carl Zeiss Axiovert 200 inverted optical microscope enclosed in a Micro-G acoustic/ vibration isolation table; a Nikon E800M compound microscope with extra long WD objectives and fluorescence digital imaging capability (CoolSNAP-cf camera) and a Nikon TE2000 inverted microscope with color and fluorescence digital imaging capability (Insight QE and CoolSNAP-fx cameras); a Hitachi S-520 scanning electron microscope and a Hitachi H-600 transmission electron microscope; a Technics Hummer X Cold Sputter/Etch System; a SPI Plasma Prep II Plasma Etcher; a Maxtek RQCM quartz crystal microbalance equipped with a PTFE flow through cell; an Instron 5542 tensile and compression testing instrument; a Cole-Parmer Surface Tensiometer 20; an Agilent 2100 computer controlled Bioanalyzer (Lab-on-a-Chip) for microfluidic of RNA, DNA, and proteins; a Perkin Elmer LS-55 fluorescence spectrometer equipped with temperature-controlled cuvette, microplate, and TLC plate reading capabilities; a Molecular Devices SpectraMax Gemini EM fluorescence plate reader; 30mW Nd:YAG 532 nm laser; a LabView-based control station with a variety of computer-controlled pumps, pressure transducers, thermocouples, thermoelectric heating-cooling modules, pH and ion selective electrode meters, and computer-controlled power supplies. The Bioengineering Center also includes a 316 sq. ft. machine shop equipped with a CNC Sherline/Flashcut 2000 milling machine and 4400 lathe controlled by a PC running SolidWorks CAD software and VisualMill 4.0CAM software; a Spectra Physik EMG 102 90Watt excimer laser capable of using ArF(193nm), KrF(248nm), XeCl(308nm) or XeF(351nm) integrated into Florod laser cutting optics; EXFO Acticure 400 100W UV spot curing system; Anatech Hummer II gold sputter coater; SPI Plasma Prep II etcher/cleaner; Sharplan 1100 140W CO2 cutting laser; ASM wire wedge bonder Model AB509A-06. Equipment maintenance and user training is provided by the bioengineering center manager, Dr. Robert Doebler.

The Lab automation Core Facility is equipped with a BioMek FX high throughput liquid handling system (Beckman Coulter), a Multi-probe 2HT liquid handling system (Packard), an OmniGrid microarrayer (GeneMachines), a 3 laser ScanArray 4000 (GSI Lumonics/Packard Biochip), other small equipment needed to accomplish protocols related to liquid handling, microarray construction and analysis. Two workstations are available to run the OmniGrid and ScanArray 4000, respectively. These computers are networked to facilitate processing and sharing of data. The lab automation core facility is managed by Dr. Robert Doebler and operated by Denice Woyski, who will work with students on particular research projects.

The Proteomics Center includes two dimensional gel electrophoresis equipment (Bio-Rad Protean IEF Cell for isoelectric focusing using immobilized pH gradients and Bio-Rad Protean II xi Cell for SDS-PAGE analysis), gel image analysis systems (Bio-Rad VersaDoc Imaging System and UVP AutoChemi System) and a Thermo Finnigan ProteomeX integrated workstation containing the LCQ Deca XP ion trap mass spectrometer combined with multidimensional liquid chromatography, tandem mass spectrometry as well high throughput protein identification capabilities. The proteomics center is managed and operated by Prof.’s Deb and Bulbul Chakravarti.

The Central Computer Facilities  at KGI support high-performance computational and visualization functions, and include workstations and software to support bioengineering, bioinformatics, and molecular biology. KGI’s computational resources  consist of a 34 node Sun Netra Cluster Grid with a Sun Blade 1000 console node, a Silicon Graphics Origin 2000 computer server (16 MIPS CPUs, 16 GB of RAM and nearly 400 GB of fibre channel dual port RAID arrays), a 4 processor Sun V880 database server, and a dual processor Sun 280 server attached to two high speed fibre channel data arrays with over 500 GB for file services to support high performance computation and database access and 3 SGI Octane workstations (64 bit R12000 CPU, 256 MB RAM, Octane/SE graphics) for high end data visualization. Bioinformatics support for faculty research programs and other core facilities is provided through in-house mirror copies of the major public sequence and structural databases, standard bioinformatics tools such as the GCG Wisconsin Sequence Analysis Package, and an in-house implementation of the ArrayExpress database for microarray data storage and query. A four person Information Technology staff provides support for the present systems and network. Personal workstations are available to students in our computer labs.

The Amgen Bioprocessing Center is currently under development at KGI, made possible by recent generous support from the Amgen foundation and Amgen’s executive vice president. The Center will enable production of biotherapeutics and biocatalysts in an academic, GLP setting, and will consist of pilot-scale fermentation, preparation and purification facilities and analytic instrumentation for quality control. The center’s mission is to support educational programs as well as industrial collaborations. The center will be under the oversight of Prof. Matthew S. Croughan.