The Institute of Systems Biology (INBIOSIS) is a centre of excellence, a reference and training centre for modern biotechnology research that takes a systems perspective – that is, that seeks holistic understanding of biological complexity.  The Institute has been designed to provide a dynamic infrastructure and environment where teams of researchers, drawn from university faculty and postgraduate students from a variety of disciplines, can pool their collective expertise to pursue challenging multidisciplinary basic research on tropical biology resources.

INBIOSIS is a research institute designed to facilitate the collaborative, interdisciplinary research that is increasingly essential for synthesizing and advancing biological research with the “big picture” in mind.  That is, while the research projects may focus on very specific parts of a biological system, the explicit goal and framework of the research is to build understanding of the emergent properties of the larger system.  An organization at this level of research serves the essential functions of creating a meeting space for researchers from the various contributing faculties, facilitating the design of interdisciplinary collaborative research projects, and supporting the implementation of those projects.  Everyone at INBIOSIS, whether lecturer, student, or industry R&D staff, is a researcher first and foremost, a valued member of the research team.

In seeking ways of using new knowledge of biological systems for biotechnology applications, the Institute will initiate and encourage smart partnerships with the biotechnology industries.  It is envisioned that the Institute will play an important role in the generation of intellectual property in the field of biotechnology.

The establishment of the Institute on July 1, 2005 consolidates and strengthens the university’s established and successful modern biotechnology research programmes: the Centre for Gene Analysis and Technology (CGAT), the Centre for Plant Biotechnology (CPB), and the Centre for Bioinformatics Research (CBR).