Samuel Stupp has some lofty goals for his research institute. But he ticks them off as though they were a list of groceries.

“We’re going after ambitious targets,” said Stupp, a materials science and engineering professor. “Like regenerating the central nervous system, curing diabetic patients and also regenerating the heart.”

The Institute for BioNanotechnology in Medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine, which Stupp directs, is one of the three newest research institutes at Northwestern that share a common thread — bridging the gaps between NU’s academic disciplines to tackle problems from multiple angles.

Interdisciplinary work has always been a hallmark of academics at NU, and the new institutes fall in line with the university’s latest effort for even more interaction between disciplines as outlined in Highest Order of Excellence II, said University Provost Lawrence Dumas.

“Disciplines get invented at Northwestern,” Dumas said, “So Northwestern’s made a strength out of its breadth.”

The Institute for BioNanotechnology in Medicine, established in 2000, brings together researchers from the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Feinberg and various science departments in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences to take on some of the toughest obstacles in medicine.

The Chemistry of Life Processes Institute, inaugurated in April, will investigate problems in human health.

The most recent addition, the Institute on Complex Systems, launched in October, has perhaps the broadest scope, uniting researchers in fields extending from engineering to linguistics to investigate “research projects that range from self-assembly in engineering to studying creativity in the Broadway industry,” said the new institute’s co-director, Kellogg School of Management Prof. Daniel Diermeier.

“It’s an exciting time to be at Northwestern,” said neurobiology and physiology Prof. Teresa Woodruff.

At the Institute for BioNanotechnology in Medicine, researchers will investigate how to use microscopic tools used in nanotechnology to solve monolithic problems, Stupp said.

Regenerating human tissues and organs — known as regenerative medicine — is among the top research priorities at IBNAM. The field involves some of the most advanced and modern concepts in medicine, such as stem cell research.

Another priority for the institute is finding “therapies by design,” Stupp said. These are remedies that use tools on the nanoscale to worm their way through the human body and narrowly target areas where they are needed.

Such therapies have potential for treating serious ailments like cancer, but often carry adverse side effects.

“What we’re interested in there is discovering nanostructures that can target specific parts of the body where they are needed.” Stupp said.

At the Institute on Complex Systems, the research scope is a bit broader.

Diermeier, the institute’s director, said its goal is to study systems that are highly organized but have no central organizing principle. Examples run the gamut from human cells on the microscopic scale to human cultures on the global scale, Diermeier said.

“You can have some genes interacting,” he said. “By interacting they are able to create new proteins … or you can have individuals interacting, and that creates thing like organizations, norms, cultures, and belief systems and so forth.”

The goal is to find out how and why such “complex systems” are organized in the way they are, and how to solve the problems that emerge as they operate.

Diermeier gave the example of an outbreak of a contagious disease in a large city — a classic example of a complex system.

Suppose you have the disease and it has to be contained. Who, he asked, do you innoculate?

“You’d think the people around you,” Diermeier said. “But not necessarily.”

Such a question was asked in a study involving a hypothetical bioterror attack on Portland, Ore., he said. Studying traffic networks and the patterns of human interaction in Portland, the researchers came up with a counterintuitive answer.

“The answer is, you want to immunize the bus drivers,” Diermeier said.

At the Chemistry for Life Processes Institute, engineers, chemists, biologists, clinicians and others operate under one roof to tackle problems involving human health, said director and chemistry Prof. Thomas O’Halloran.

The most notoriously tough diseases to crack — cancer, Lou Gherig’s disease, nerve degeneration among others — are at the top of the institute’s agenda, O’Halloran said.

The institute is still in its infancy, but a “proteomics building” near the Technological Institute is in the works to house the institute eventually.

Reach Dan Strumpf at [email protected].