Biomedical science is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, as reliant on the physical and computational sciences as on biology. But how are the biomedical investigators of the future going to learn to work effectively across disciplinary lines? Ten universities in the United States, including the University of New Mexico, will help lead the way with grants of $1 million from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to initiate fundamental changes in the way Ph.D. scientists are trained at their respective institutions. UNM was one of 10 schools out of 132 applicants to be awarded the grant.
The three-year grants will be used to develop innovative graduate education programs designed to produce a cadre of scientists with the knowledge and skills to conduct research at the interface between the biomedical, physical, and computational sciences. Overall, HMMI is awarding $10 million ($1 million each) to the 10 selected institutions.
Distinguished Professor of Biology James Brown is the primary investigator for UNM. He, along with co-PI’s Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy Nitant Kenkre; Professor Stephanie Forrest, computer science; Research Professor Felisa Smith, biology; and Professor Edward Bedrick, mathematics and statistics and internal medicine, plan to develop a cohesive interdisciplinary sciences program.
Strategies include the consolidation of graduate training activities from biology, computer sciences, math/statistics/ and physics/astronomy. They will also collaborate with scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Santa Fe Institute. UNM’s program will feature a new core curriculum spanning departments with five new graduate courses including two interdisciplinary courses, two seminar courses and one summer school course at another institution.
Additionally, thesis research will be conducted in small intensely focused interdisciplinary teams composed of senior scientists, post doctorates and graduate students all working collaboratively on related scientific questions. A key point of the training experience involves working in these teams to do model building and model evaluation through experimentation and brainstorming. Teams will conduct intensive sessions weekly to address multiple problems with a common theme – going through all phases of research (brainstorming, problem definition, writing and publishing results.
“UNM is already offering excellent interdisciplinary graduate education,” said Brown. “So far, however, these activities have been centered within individual departments. This new training grant should allow our students to collaborate more freely across departments and obtain even better preparation for influential careers in the biomedical sciences.”
HHMI is partnering with the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) to ensure sustaining support as well as start-up funds for the new programs. Following a second competition to ensure that the HHMI-funded recipients achieved their original goals, the NIBIB — committed to integrating the physical and life sciences — will support the second phase of this program, which is aimed at sustaining interdisciplinary graduate education.
“The HHMI-NIBIB partnership capitalizes on the special strengths of each organization,” said HHMI President Thomas R. Cech. “HHMI can provide flexible support to catalyze development of new interdisciplinary programs, and the NIBIB will sustain these and related programs once they are developed, as NIH does so well with traditional training grants.”
After HHMI support ends, NIBIB will step in with peer-reviewed institutional training grants.
“NIBIB is excited to enter into this historic alliance with HHMI to support training of the biomedical scientist of the future, one skilled in interdisciplinary research,” said Roderic Pettigrew, NIBIB director. “These scientists will be better equipped to advance medical research in the 21st century, solve major challenges and optimize the delivery of human healthcare.”
Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu
Posted by scarr at November 23, 2005 10:23 AM