The Waksman Institute of Microbiology is a research facility on the Busch Campus

Busch Campus (Rutgers University)

Busch Campus is one of the five campuses at Rutgers University's main New Brunswick/Piscataway area campus, and is located entirely within Piscataway Township, New Jersey. Academic facilities and departments centered on this campus are primarily those related to the natural sciences: physics,...

 of Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

. It is named after Selman Waksman

Selman Waksman

Selman Abraham Waksman was an American biochemist and microbiologist whose research into organic substances—largely into organisms that live in soil—and their decomposition promoted the discovery of Streptomycin, and several other antibiotics...

, who was a faculty member who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1952 for research which led to the discovery of streptomycin

Streptomycin

Streptomycin is an antibiotic drug, the first of a class of drugs called aminoglycosides to be discovered, and was the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis. It is derived from the actinobacterium Streptomyces griseus. Streptomycin is a bactericidal antibiotic. Streptomycin cannot be given...

. 18 antibiotics were isolated in Waksman's laboratory. Streptomycin and neomycin

Neomycin

Neomycin is an aminoglycoside antibiotic that is found in many topical medications such as creams, ointments, and eyedrops. The discovery of Neomycin dates back to 1949. It was discovered in the lab of Selman Waksman, who was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and medicine in 1951...

, and actinomycin

Actinomycin

The actinomycins are a class of polypeptide antibiotics isolated from soil bacteria of the genus Streptomyces, of which the most significant is actinomycin D. It was the first antibiotic isolated by Selman Waksman and his co-worker H. B. Woodruff in 1940.-Mechanism:Actinomycin D is primarily used...

, were commercialized.

The current director of the Institute is Professor Joachim Messing

Joachim Messing

Joachim Messing is a university professor of Molecular Biology and the fourth director of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University....

.