UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Andrew Patterson thrives on asking big questions that push science beyond the boundaries of a single lab. To pursue them, he relies on collaboration, cutting-edge technology and the expertise found in the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences’ core facilities — shared laboratories that make transformative discoveries possible across Penn State and beyond.
The core facilities house state-of-the-art instruments, technologies and expert staff. At the Huck, they provide researchers across disciplines with access to advanced tools for discovery, from genomics and metabolomics to microscopy and cryo-electron microscopy. The facilities can be used by Penn State researchers and industry partners.
Patterson, who is the John T. and Paige S. Smith Professor, professor of molecular toxicology and of biochemistry and molecular biology, and Huck Chair in Molecular Toxicology at Penn State, has been named associate director for shared and core facilities at the Huck Institutes. In this new role, he will champion the resources that he said have helped to define his career. He will guide the strategic direction of Huck’s shared laboratories, working closely with their directors and faculty advocates to raise visibility, expand faculty use, support cutting-edge technology and foster collaboration on complex, multi-investigator projects.
The 11 Huck core facilities Patterson will help oversee include the Biomolecular Interactions Facility, Cryo-Electron Microscopy Facility, CSL Behring Fermentation Facility, Flow Cytometry Facility, Genomics Core Facility, High-Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging Facility, Metabolomics Core Facility, Microscopy Facility, Proteomics and Mass Spectrometry Core Facility, Sartorius Cell Culture Facility, and the X-Ray Crystallography and Scattering Facility.
“My hope is to lead by example,” Patterson said. “Our work is highly collaborative and uses many of these resources. I want to demonstrate how valuable they are to faculty success, to Huck’s mission, and to the University as a whole.”
Since the Huck Institutes was established in 1996, Penn State has invested nearly $50 million in its shared facilities, supporting faculty, students and industry partners across disciplines. Today, more than 297 laboratories rely on these resources to investigate problems in human and animal health, agriculture and the environment.
“Penn State’s core facilities enable scientists to conduct research that would be impossible to do alone due to the high cost of the equipment and expertise,” Patterson said. “Not only do these facilities support Penn State’s faculty members, but they also help to train students for impactful careers and support industry partnerships that aim to translate research findings into products and services that benefit the public.”
Patterson’s own interdisciplinary research program spans the fields of molecular toxicology and microbiome science and uses metabolomics, bioinformatics, X-ray crystallography and microscopy tools — all with a goal of understanding how exposure to chemicals affects human health. Nearly all this work has relied on Huck’s core facilities.
In particular, his connection to metabolomics — the study of the chemical fingerprints resulting from cellular processes — has shaped much of his scientific trajectory. While a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institutes of Health, he noticed that many of the chemical signatures he detected seemed to come from the bacteria that make up the gut microbiome, suggesting that these bacteria play a much larger role in human health than previously believed. That discovery eventually led him to Penn State, where he became involved in helping to expand the Metabolomics Core Facility.
For Patterson, the highly skilled and dedicated core directors running the facilities are what make them world-class.
“The experts leading our facilities really set us apart, without a doubt,” he said. “Penn State has remained committed to keeping these facilities at the cutting edge, continually reinvesting in technology and recruiting faculty who will use and expand these resources.”
Christina Grozinger, the Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and director of the Huck Institutes, said Patterson’s appointment will help strengthen an already exceptional network.
“Andrew’s deep experience as both a core facility user and a collaborator across disciplines makes him uniquely suited to lead in this role,” Grozinger said. “His vision will help to ensure that our core facilities remain among the very best in the world while fostering the connections that drive groundbreaking science.”
Patterson often describes the network of facilities as “a research shopping center,” where nearly every solution is available in one place. That breadth allows researchers to push into new territory, he said, pointing to the example of his recent work on bile acid metabolism, which drew on expertise from multiple facilities including metabolomics, genomics and crystallography.
Looking ahead, Patterson said he hopes to encourage more faculty to take advantage of these shared resources and to explore ways to better integrate the data they produce. He sees emerging opportunities with artificial intelligence and large-scale data modeling to help solve problems in the health and life sciences.
“The core facilities give us a unique competitive advantage for securing grants and publications,” he said. “The more we can use them, and use them together, the more we can tackle the big questions that no single lab could solve on its own.”
For Patterson, the true measure of success is not only in the discoveries made in the lab but in the people who carry that work forward.
“The biggest impact we can have is making sure the students and postdocs who work with us go on to independent careers, whether in industry or academia,” he said. “At the same time, I hope the research being done at Huck will continue to improve public health. If we can help people make better informed decisions about their health, that would be the ultimate goal.”