Max Planck Florida Institute Hires Chief Scientific Facilities Officer
For immediate release
JUPITER, Fla. (July 2, 2010) – Ivan C. Baines, PhD has joined the Max Planck Florida Institute as Chief Scientific Facilities Officer. He is responsible for the scientific infrastructure at the research organization, including establishing and managing the laboratories and scientific services for maximum quality and productivity, and implementing a budget management structure. He will also serve on the executive board of directors that oversees the design and operation of the Max Planck Florida Institute, which broke ground on their new 100,000-square-foot biomedical facility in June.
“One of the major reasons I was attracted to the Max Planck Florida Institute is the appeal of Florida and its emerging role as the new frontier for bioscience in the United States,” said Baines. “There’s a sound concentration of more than 200 biotech companies already established around the state, and combined with a diverse university system, top-tier research institutes and the beautiful weather, this is an ideal place for science to thrive.”
Over a career span of 15 years, Baines has worked in five countries and 12 cities around the globe, has advised more than 100 biotech and life sciences companies and helped establish biotech incubators in Dresden and Leipzig in Germany. He was most recently one of six directors and the scientific coordinator of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden. Prior to that, he was the director of business development for Aptanomics, a drug discovery company in Lyon, France, and founding partner and managing director for Biopolis Consultants GmbH in Dresden. During the same period, he helped establish and served as the first director of Biosaxony, the trade organization and state-funded initiative to promote biotech in Saxony, Germany.
Baines has served on several committees and scientific advisory boards, including the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IIMCB) in Warsaw, Poland and the Telethon Technical Patent Board in Milan, Italy. He is currently an advisory board member of imaGenes, the premier service center for genome research in Europe, and the European Platform for Patients’ Organizations, Science and Industry (EPPOSI), a multi-stakeholder forum with the goal of improving treatment and prevention of serious diseases in Brussels, Belgium.
The Max Planck Florida Institute is currently operating in a 40,000-square-foot temporary facility on the MacArthur Campus, with a wide scope of scientific research underway. The Digital Nueroanatomy group, under the direction of 1991 Nobel Laureate in Medicine Dr. Bert Sakmann, is conducting a program dedicated to creating a three-dimensional map of the normal brain. The Molecular Neurobiology group, under the direction of Dr. Samuel M. Young, Jr. is studying synapses – the highly specialized contact points in the brain where neurons pass electrical and chemical signals to one another. Additional research groups are ready to start their operations in July and September. Collectively, these research approaches will provide fundamental impulses that can open up new technological possibilities in medical diagnostics and care for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, mental retardation and others.
The permanent biomedical research center and laboratories is expected to be completed by early 2012. For more information, visit www.maxplanckflorida.org.
About the Max Planck Society:
Germany’s Max Planck Society has led the world in advancing the frontiers of scientific research for more than 60 years. The independent, nonprofit organization, with its international staff of around 20,400, including research fellows and visiting scientists, has an annual operating budget of $1.8 billion. Named for the 1918 Nobel Prize-winning physicist and founder of the quantum theory, Max Planck, the scientific institution maintains 80 institutes and research facilities located mainly in Germany, but also in Italy, Netherlands, and now in the United States. All are focused on exceptional, results-oriented basic research in the life sciences, social sciences and the humanities.
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