Gottlieb Institute

The Gottlieb Institute is an independently funded medical research facility located in Colorado. Initially established as an evolutionary biology research institute, the GI now researches and treats issues relating to the fields of genetics, virology, and nanomedicine.

History
The institute was conceived by and named after its founder, Leslie D. Gottlieb. Leslie David Gottlieb established the Gottlieb Genetic Biology Foundation in 1959 with the aim of setting up an institute that could conduct genetic research in the agriculture field, but Leslie Gottlieb did not start the Gottlieb Institute until 1968. It was built in Colorado with contributions from investors of the Gottlieb Genetic Biology Foundation during Gottlieb's last year at the University of Michigan. The location of the Institute was the founder's former residence, and it was completed March 1969 as an independent research institute for genetic and biology studies.

Aims
The Gottlieb Institute has been conducting independent research for more than forty years. Its aim is to promote unorthodox thinking and thereby generate groundbreaking approaches to problems. The GI endeavours to be a meeting place, a space for bold ideas and for communication that transcends boundaries.

Thanks to its networking, the GI functions as a worldwide knowledge platform for researching and discussing medical issues and making the results available to the broader public.

Directors of the GI

 * Leslie D. Gottlieb (1967–1983)
 * David Gottlieb (1983–1993)
 * Noah Aptekar (1993 - Current)

In 1983, Leslie Gottlieb stepped down as director with his son, David Gottlieb, taking his place as Director. During the following months the Institute widened its scope to include human genetics, virology, and nanomedicine. Noah Aptekar has headed up the Gottlieb Institute since 1993.

Contributions
The Leslie and Vera Gottlieb Research Fund in Plant Evolutionary Biology was established in 2006 to provide funds to graduate students to support both laboratory and field research in the evolutionary biology of plants native to western North America. This is a broad field that includes evolutionary and population genetics, systematics and phylogenetic studies, comparative analyses of development, and physiological and biochemical studies of plant adaptations. The Research Fund provides an annual award of $5000.

The Research Fund will help many grad students initiate their own careers in science as well as providing new information and new ideas about plant evolution.

After Leslie Gottlieb's death in 2006, Director Noah Aptekar oversaw the construction of the Leslie Gottlieb Wing. The wing was completed in 2009 and is currently used as the facility's outpatient wing.