The NIGMS Center for Systems Biology, located at the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle, Washington, is one of ten National Centers for Systems Biology funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). The Center is composed of approximately 40 interdisciplinary researchers and, in March 2006, was awarded 16.3 million dollars for five years.

The NIGMS funding has been critical for creating programs that span the associated disciplines of systems biology - biology, computer science, applied mathematics, physics and engineering - and the traditional ‘edges’ that can exist between research and educational and outreach programs. The award is the ‘glue’ that binds the interdisciplinary interactions of the research groups to the educational and outreach programs.

The Center is comprised of six integrated research programs that use model systems with increasing levels of complexity, from Halobacterium and yeast to mammalian systems. These model systems are used to generate information about networks and, with the aid of computational models, to the study of innate immunity and disease diagnostics. The research program is unified by the question: How do dynamic molecular networks respond to environmental cues?

The Center has four Aims and the objectives of each aim complement and further the objectives of the other aims. For example, the aim to create a systems biology culture fosters the free exchange of challenges, ideas and knowledge that lead to deeper scientific inquiry and the development of educational, professional development and outreach programs. The scientific aims drive the aim to develop Core technology and also result in the educational, professional development and outreach opportunities that contribute to the culture of systems biology. For example, in 2008 the Center has developed courses in Microfluidics, Experimental and Computational Biology, and Network Analysis. Below are the Center Aims in more detail.