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Bar Harbor Research Is World-Renowned
Cadillac
Mountain isn’t the only thing calling visitors to Bar Harbor in
summer. Research, not just recreation, is a draw because two
world-renowned, historically prominent scientific laboratories are
located within miles of each other.
The Jackson
Laboratory is the bigger by far, with about 1,100 employees. By
comparison, the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory is far
smaller, with just 21 year-round scientists on staff. The MDI lab is
currently planning to bring on another five scientists in the coming
year, which would ultimately expand its workforce to about 50
year-round after each researcher brings additional assistants.
But summer is
when both labs bloom and educational opportunities abound for
qualified, interested outsiders. Just last week, both MDIBL and the
Jackson Lab welcomed the first batch of college students, these ones
from Bates College. They are settling in for two weeks of intense
research, courtesy of a $5.5 million grant the labs received last
fall from National Institute of Health. Both labs are working with
four of Maine’s secondary institutions—the Bar Harbor-based College
of the Atlantic, University of Maine, Colby College and Bates—to
host student scientists for a few weeks at a time.
Both labs are
tucked into the opposite ends of Bar Harbor. They nestle in the
wooded portions of the town, away from the stream of tourists.
The Mount Desert
Island lab is in Salisbury Cove, where labs are housed in small
cottages dotting an informal campus. The Jackson Lab grounds are
more instititutional.
Both established
as non-profit scientific institutions, each lab has plenty of
history, too. MDI lab was founded in 1898 at South Harpswell, Maine,
and moved to its present site in 1921. Today its focus is marine
biomedical research, meaning that scientists—which include as many
as 65 visiting professionals in summer—use marine animals to study
human health.
The Jackson Lab
is world-known for its genetic research using mice. It is one of 10
institutions currently designated by the National Cancer Institute
as “Cancer Centers” to conduct basic cancer research.
Each year the
Laboratory supplies approximately two million mice from more than
2,700 stocks and strains to universities, medical schools and
research laboratories around the world.
This summer, The
Jackson Lab hosts its 73rd year of the student summer program. |
