The Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine opened its doors in October 1993, with its first recruits joining the institute during 1994. The institute, encompassing 60,000 square feet of laboratory space divided over four floors, focuses boldly on basic research but provides both core facilities and interaction between the clinical disciplines and the activities in basic science at the New York University Medical Center. With a strong awareness that most medical breakthroughs originate in basic research, the medical center has allocated considerable resources in developing a state-of-the-art, modern, interdisciplinary research unit right in the center of the medical school environment.

	Ruth Lehmann
	Director of the Skirball Institute

	Developmental Genetics
	How spatial organization of the body plan is achieved during embryogenesis such that a single egg cell gives rise to a highly structured ogranism.

	Molecular Neurobiology
	Understanding the generation of neural cells and their targets and the mechanisms that allow axons to find their targets, to form synapses and to signal one another.

	Molecular Pathogensis
	Molecular mechanisms of the immune response, interactions of pathogenic organisms with their hosts, and means of bodytaining healthy cells.

	Structural Biology
	Elucidation of molecular structure as a means of understanding mechanisms involved in membrane transport, cell signaling, RNA regulation, cell adhesion.