At the University of Pennsylvania, Steve Fluharty is the senior vice provost for research, as well as a professor and researcher himself in the School of Veterinary Medicine. Now he's got one more hat to wear, as a member of the selection committee for the newly-announced Golden Goose Awards, sponsored by a congressional committee and supported by the AAAS and a broad base of other organizations and industry. At a time when basic research in particular is hard-tasked to justify its continued funding, the point of the awards is to look positively at the sometimes-serendipitous nature of scientific progress so as not to "kill the golden goose" (that lays the golden eggs), which all variations on the ancient fable agree is a really bad idea. Wikipedia says of the phrase: It is generally used of a short-sighted action that destroys the profitability of an asset. Exactly.
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Tags: Northeast, University of Pennsylvania, scientific research, animal science, Philadelphia, Funding, scientists solutions, basic research funding
The University of California at Riverside is part of the Inland Empire, the geographic area just south and east of the Greater Los Angeles metro area and Orange County. As a member of the UC System, Riverside enjoys the advantage of being a part of the strongest public university system in the United States. Now UCR is making other collaborative ties, this time not statewise but more locally: by teaming up with Loma Linda University and Cal State San Bernardino to pool stem cell laboratory resources. The new regional entity will be known as the Inland Empire Stem Cell Consortium, and it will allow all three schools to qualify for increased federal funding in addition to the other benefits of joining forces.
Tags: University of California Riverside, Medical Research, Stem cell research, Southwest, California, Funding, research laboratories, UC Riverside, science research funding
The University of Wisconsin at Madison is doing very well launching bioscience startups and attracting young entrepreneurs to set up shop near the sprawling campus on Lake Mendota. The University Research Park is so popular there's a huge Phase II addition several years in the planning and due to break ground any day. Funding for university spinoffs, like the NIH's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants, are helping to fuel Madison's bioscience economy too, as a team from the Dept. of Chemical and Biological Engineering just proved in securing $362,489 towards developing its novel advanced biomaterials for wound healing and surgical applications.
Tags: Midwest, Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin, University Research, university research park, University of Wisconsin Madison, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, NIH, chemistry researchers, Biomedical Research Funding
There's a reason why top university medical centers garner the prestige (and the funding) that they do: research labs + medical school + hospital = optimization of all three units, with ripe opportunities for collaboration, sharing of resources, and recruiting the best medical scientists. So there's always reason to cheer when a major university med center like Ohio State builds new facilities, whether they're clinical or research, because both will support the institution's overall mission and budget. In the case of Ohio State's new James Cancer Center and Solove Research Institute, both patients seeking treatment and scientists doing basic and applied cancer research will benefit from the state-of-the-art building that is rising on the Columbus medical campus right now, with its opening due in 2014. The complex will house the cancer center on 12 stories; the other 8 will comprise the critical care hospital, mechanical equipment and an as yet undetermined floor.
Tags: Midwest, Ohio State University, Ohio, biomedical research, Biomedical expansion, Medical Device Technology, Biomedical Equipment, cancer research, New research facilities, new construction, Cancer Center, scientific instruments
The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is a branch of the NIH, and they administer the ENCODE project, which stands for Encyclopedia of DNA Elements. Established in 2003, the goal of ENCODE is to create a comprehensive catalog of functional genomic elements. Towards that end, they have just awarded a further $10.5M in grants to 10 research institutions with investigators working in three main areas:
Tags: genomic research, genome research, biology research, Funding, Genomics, NIH, research lab awards
The National Eye Institute (NEI) has just awarded a major grant to a team of three scientists from the Scripps Institute and the University of California San Diego to develop a novel treatment for diabetic retinopathy and other forms of macular degeneration. The optical research investigators are:
Tags: University of California San Diego, nanotechnology, Southwest, California, Scripps, Angiogenesis Modulation, San Diego, Funding, innovative solution, Biotechnology Vendor Showcase, scientist solutions, BVS
Rockefeller University, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center are not only neighbors along Manhattan's East River Drive, they're research collaborators in the Tri-Institutional Stem Cell Initiative (Tri-SCI). Established in 2005 with a gift from the Starr Foundation, that same charitable organization has just committed another $50M to stem cell research at the three adjacent campuses. In addition to funding researchers and laboratory equipment, Tri-SCI provides support for 3 research core facilities for the derivation, characterization and maintenance of current and new human embryonic stem cell lines.
Tags: Rockefeller University, Northeast, Stem cell research, New York, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, New York City, BRPF, charitable giving
Sometimes sacrifices have to be made in the name of progress. In the case of Utah's just-opened USTAR collaborative research building on the Salt Lake City campus of the University of Utah, no one seems to be lamenting the loss of a golf course that used to lie between the Medical School and an engineering complex. Not when the new 208,000sf, $130M, state-of-the-art Sorenson Molecular Biotechnology Building is there instead, with all of its bright and shiny promise to drive innovation and economic development in the Beehive State.
Tags: Utah, Utah State University, university of utah, Translational Research, New research facilities, Southwest, Neuroscience, Funding, new construction
Human beings like stories. We think narratively. If there isn't a beginning, middle, and end, we try and create them from the information we have at hand, because things happen in time and, we like to think, with purpose and significance. Life science research takes as its subject living things, and all living things have a life cycle, at the end of which they die, just like in a story. There is no stasis, and nothing in real life happens in a clean room: living things interact with other living things and physical processes in what we sometimes call ecosystems, which are messy, elegant places of contingency and interdependence.
Tags: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Cornell University, women in science, Illinois, biology research scientists, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Front Line event, Ecology, BRPF, scientific sales
The Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building on the East Campus of the University of Colorado Boulder is already welcoming researchers to their new labs and offices, and on April 26 there will be an official dedication ceremony for the 330,000sf innovative life science facility. While the university is still waiting for state funding to construct a fifth wing for teaching space, the current building is scheduled to be fully occupied by June. As we reported in a widely-read earlier blog on this much-anticipated research complex, one of the key tenants will be the Biofrontiers Institute, formerly the CIMB. Joining them are the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the Division of Biochemistry.
Tags: Bioresearch, flow cytometry, Biofrontiers Institute, New research facilities, Southwest, University of Colorado Boulder, BioResearch Product Faire Event, biotech industry, Colorado, new construction, Boulder, UCO, BRPF, construction