Academic Information :: Centers and Institutes :: Research Facilities

Centers and Institutes

The image of a lone scientist, a Louis Pasteur or an Albert Einstein, working deep into the night on a weighty problem still holds a romantic appeal for many. But modern science doesn’t work that way. Scientific discovery requires the combined efforts of a collaboration of many people, sometimes from many disciplines. In many respects, they are like a cadre of sculptors each chipping away at an amorphous object before a recognizable picture - the truth - is finally revealed. Uncovering these truths of nature is the objective of the Centers and Institutes listed below, at the Notre Dame College of Science.

Center for Aquatic Conservation
While only miles from Lake Michigan, the scope of the Center’s efforts reaches well beyond the Great Lakes. From invasive species in the Great Lakes Region to waterborne diseases in tropical Africa, the mission of the Center for Aquatic Conservation is to promote the application of scientific knowledge to conserve earth’s freshwater resources.

Center for Applied Mathematics
The Center for Applied Mathematics was established to encourage interdisciplinary applied mathematics research at the University of Notre Dame. The Center has a colloquium series, invites short term visitors, runs conferences and workshops, and gives graduate student support and some funding for undergraduate applied mathematics research.

Center for Astrophysics
The Center for Astrophysics has been created to provide a collaborative environment for the University's many diverse activities in theoretical astrophysics, observational astronomy, and astrophysics projects at Notre Dame's Nuclear Structures Laboratory and the Project GRAND cosmic air shower array.

Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Biocomplexity
The goal of the Center for Biocomplexity is to meld physical, mathematical, and computational approaches with those of modern biology to understand this complexity in a quantitative and predictive way.

Center for Complex Network Research
The Center for Complex Network Research seeks to understand the architecture of networks, how networks emerge, what they look like, and how networks impact our understanding of complex systems. Center members use statistical physics to capture the topology of diverse systems within a single framework. Their research ranges from the topology of the worldwide web to complex cellular network inside human cells to the interconnectedness of Hollywood actors.

Center for Environmental Science and Technology
This Center, formerly named the Center for Bioengineering and Pollution Control, is a cooperative effort between the College of Science and the College of Engineering, providing education and basic research opportunities for the development of cutting-edge technologies leading to innovative solutions to both national and international environmental problems.

Center for Nano Science and Technology
The Center for Nano Science and Technology explores new device concepts and associated circuit architectures which are enabled by novel phenomena on the nanometer scale. The Center catalyzes multidisciplinary research at the intersection between chemistry and biochemistry, physics, electrical engineering, and computer science and engineering.

Center for Global Health and Infectious Diseases
This world renowned research group includes faculty whose interests center around both animal parasites and arthropod vectors of human pathogens as well as the pathogens they transmit, and the human response to infection.

Center for Zebrafish Research
The Center for Zebrafish Research is one of the largest single zebrafish centers in the nation. As a powerful vertebrate model system, zebrafish are used regularly in the research of visual system development, retinal function, visual processing, behavior, and retinal regeneration.

Environmental Molecular Sciences Institute
The mission of the Environmental Molecular Sciences Institute is to determine the effects of nano- and micro-particles (e.g., bacteria, natural organic matter, and mineral aggregates) on contaminant transport in geologic systems. The Institute integrates traditional macroscopic and microscopic techniques with state-of-the-art molecular-scale approaches such as x-ray absorption spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, and molecular dynamics modeling.

Institute for Structure & Nuclear Astrophysics
This is one of only three medium-scale accelerator laboratories in the United States funded by the National Science Foundation to perform basic research in a wide spectrum of areas that overlap with most of the highest priority scientific objectives in modern nuclear physics.

Institute for Theoretical Sciences
The Institute for Theoretical Sciences (ITS) promotes theoretical research at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and University of Notre Dame (ND) by attracting internationally recognized leaders, junior researchers as well as graduate students in selected areas of basic and applied theoretical sciences, and by providing them with the opportunity to pursue research in the international, intellectually stimulating environment of the University of Notre Dame and ANL.

JINA - The Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics
An NSF Physics Frontier Center, The Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA), is a collaborative research institute involving Notre Dame, Michigan State, University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory and others, bringing together the fields of nuclear physics, astrophysics, and astronomy.

W. M. Keck Center for Transgene Research
The research done here is for the development and use of gene targeting technology to investigate the roles of the genes of the blood coagulation, anticoagulation, and fibrinolytic pathways in hemostasis and related diseases.

Radiation Laboratory
The Notre Dame Radiation Laboratory is the premier research laboratory in the United States for radiation chemistry, the study of chemical reactions induced by ionizing radiation.

University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Center
Graduate and undergraduate students and faculty interested in Ecology and  Environmental Biology enrich their studies by conducting research at the three University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Centers (UNDERC) located in northern Wisconsin/Upper Peninsula of Michigan, western Montana, and Puerto Rico. UNDERC-Eas began in 1976 in a pristine 7500 acre tract of northern forests and lakes straddling Wisconsin and Michigan

Walther Cancer Research Center
The Walther Cancer Research Center is a collaboration between the University of Notre Dame and the Walther Cancer Institute, a private non-profit research organization affiliated with major universities and medical institutions.  The Notre Dame Cancer Institute operates within the Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Biological Sciences, and Preprofessional Studies within the College of Science.  Faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate, and undergraduate students are involved in basic and clinical studies in various areas of cancer research.