In 2003, The Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies (ICB) was founded as an Army-sponsored University Affiliated Research Center (UARC).

The ICB conducts unclassified basic scientific research through a uniquely interdisciplinary alliance led by the University of California, Santa Barbara, in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology.

ICB teams develop biologically inspired technological innovations in systems and synthetic biology, biologically enabled materials, and cognitive neuroscience.