About the Beckman Center

History and Mission

The Beckman Center officially opened its doors May 1989 with a $12 million gift from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, which covered one-fifth of the nearly $60 million construction and outfitting costs. The project, completed on time and under budget, was completely funded by private sources.

With the establishment of the Beckman Center, the Stanford School of Medicine was able to create and house 20 new faculty and the two new academic departments of Molecular and Cellular Physiology and Developmental Biology. Joining these were the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Unit and the well known Department of Biochemistry, with its two Nobel laureates and seven National Academy of Sciences members. The founding of the Center represented an unprecedented expansion of the basic sciences at Stanford.

The mission of the Beckman Center is to unite clinical and basic scientists by fostering an environment for interdisciplinary exchanges among schools within the university. Founded on the principle that innovation transcends traditional departmental boundaries, our Program in Molecular and Genetic Medicine (PMGM) was the first at the School of Medicine to test the power of solving problems by engaging minds from multiple disciplines. We help to integrate laboratory research with clinical medicine in the areas of infectious disease, neuroscience and spinal injuries, diabetes, arthritis and other autoimmune diseases, cancer, and heart disease.

In its 13 years of operation, the Beckman Center has become a powerhouse of basic research within the School of Medicine. The first decade focused on building bridges between basic and clinical research activities at the Stanford School of Medicine. In 1999, the Beckman Fellows program was established to support young investigators. In 2002, Beckman became pivotal to Dean Philip Pizzo's large-scale strategic plan to emphasize interaction among all university departments, becoming the inspiration for Bio-X, a program designed specifically to bring together leading-edge research in basic, applied, and clinical sciences.

Currently 17 of our 50 faculty members are members of the National Academy of Sciences. Beckman faculty hold an impressive number of honors and national awards. We continue to build on our reputation as a hub of innovative world-class biomedical research.