ORONO – Three of the state’s research institutions teamed up to win a $6 million National Science Foundation grant so they can work together to understand better the genetics of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cancer and glaucoma, officials announced Friday.

Awarded to the University of Maine in Orono, The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, and the Maine Medical Center Research Institute in Portland, the grant will be used to create the Center for Molecular Biophysical Sciences. The state will provide $3 million in matching funds.

Gov. John Baldacci and officials of the institutions involved announced the prestigious award Friday at UM’s Buchanan Alumni House.

The center will be headed by Michael Grunze, a former UM physics professor who is now director of the Institute for Physical Chemistry at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. It will open this summer at Jackson Lab.

Geneticists from Jackson Lab, physicists from UM, and cell and molecular biologists at Maine Medical Center will collaborate.

The goal is to understand the mechanisms behind genetic diseases, determine what causes them and predict who may develop them and when, said Grunze, who initially will divide his time between Bar Harbor and Germany.

“We are not medical doctors who cure diseases,” he said. “We’re trying to develop the tools and understanding to be able to cure them.”

The Jackson Lab space is being renovated for offices and labs for professors and students from UM, said Grunze.

Five to seven new positions for scientists and other staff will be filled initially, according to Grunze. There’s “big interest among the present faculty in Portland, Orono and Bar Harbor to become members of the center,” he said.

“This is a huge amount of money. It’s a recognition on the part of NSF that we’re a partnership,” said Rick Woychik, director of Jackson Lab. “This approach can achieve outcomes no single lab would have thought of .”

Deirdre Mageean, UM’s associate vice president for research, said work at the center will “lead to the development of more effective drugs, biological homeland defense and advances in ecological and environmental sciences.”

Gov. John Baldacci read a proclamation expressing the state’s goal to boost research and development efforts. The state aims to raise research and development funding from $31 million to $50 million annually, he said.

“Maine doesn’t want to just take the negative economic news and negative financial news and not do anything about it,” Baldacci said. “We’re not going to wait for our ship to come in. We’re going to build it ourselves.”