BAR HARBOR – Seven Maine institutions will share a $17.8 million federal grant to upgrade biomedical research infrastructure and improve educational opportunities for scientists and gifted students, officials announced Thursday.

The grant award to the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory will finance cooperative efforts among Maine’s colleges and private research centers.

The seven members of the Maine IDeA Network of Biomedical Excellence include Bowdoin, Bates and Colby colleges, College of the Atlantic, the University of Maine (Orono, Machias and Farmington), The Jackson Laboratory and MDIBL.

The National Institutes of Health awarded the five-year grant to the Maine network to help the state better compete for future NIH funding and to “support and conduct cutting-edge biomedical research.”

Specifically, the grant will:

. Provide research training to more than 600 Maine undergraduate students.

. Finance 25 new positions, including 20 postdoctoral and research technicians, two junior faculty and three administrative assistants.

. Support research programs for seven faculty positions over the five-year life of the grant, and four pilot research projects over two years.

In announcing the grant during MDIBL’s annual meeting Thursday, Gov. John Baldacci said the federal money would boost both biomedical research and economic development in Maine.

The field of biomedical research “is one of the bright lights of our future,” Baldacci said, while predicting that Maine’s IDeA Network will be “a major driving force in our economy.”

Dr. John Forest, director of MDIBL, said the Bar Harbor facility, located on Frenchman Bay in Salisbury Cove, has had a “profound impact” on medical research and advances. The $17.8 million grant is by far the largest ever awarded to the lab.

Forest praised Baldacci for his commitment to the biomedical field in Maine and for pushing for a state bond to improve biomedical research facilities and promote collaboration.

The $46 million bond approved last year will leverage $200 million more in federal funding, the governor said.

The grant was awarded to MDIBL because it was the biomedical lab that applied for the money, MDIBL spokeswoman Jeri Bowers said Thursday.

Bowers said MDIBL was looking to expand its programming and form alliances with other institutions when the IDeA grant became available.

“It just fit really well with what we were doing,” Bowers said. “Once the other institutions were on board, it just took off.”

The seven institutions that compose the state’s IDeA Network already have proposals for the grant money. They include, in part:

. Colby College in Waterville will buy scientific equipment and hire a molecular technician.

. College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor plans to award fellowships for students who want to work with MDIBL or Jackson Lab scientists.

. Bates College in Lewiston will use the money to establish an imaging and computing center to enhance the college’s bioinformatics and genomics research.

. Bowdoin College in Brunswick will create two new programs, pre-doctoral summer research fellowships and the addition of a junior biomedical researcher.

. The University of Maine will increase its faculty and research base in biomedical research and expand research opportunities for UM students in Orono, Machias and Farmington.

. The Jackson Lab will use its grant funds to continue its collaboration with other scientific institutions in Maine and to help finance specialized gene research.

. MDIBL will increase its biomedical research programs and expand hands-on training for Maine students.