Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research at UNM, by Janet M. Oliver

When: Mon, Apr 11 2011 5:30pm

Where: Zinc Bar and Bistro

Thanks to our speaker Janet M. Oliver, Regents Professor of Pathology and to Kevin Roessler and the Zinc restaurant staff.

Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research at UNM

Janet M. Oliver, Regents’ Professor of Pathology

New Mexico is a natural laboratory for interdisciplinary biomedical research. UNM has a single campus, so our physical and computational scientists and engineers live side by side with biomedical scientists and clinicians. We have a culture of openness, so that students for example in Physics and Engineering have often looked for thesis problems in the Medical School. We have a track record in interdisciplinary training – our programs in cancer biology and in biomedical engineering are examples. We are the obvious first place for translation of technology and computation from the National Labs to problems in biology. In the past few years, interdisciplinary approaches have been reinforced by large NSF, NIH and NCI grants supporting the emerging disciplines of Systems Biology and Cancer Nanotechnology.

I will present an overview of the New Mexico Spatiotemporal Modeling Center, a National Center for Systems Biology established in 2009, whose core mission is to understand normal and abnormal cell behavior through the development and integration of spatial, temporal and biochemical measurements and computational models of cell signaling pathways. I will introduce The New Mexico Cancer Nanotechnology Training Center, an even newer (2010) National Center focused on the development and use of nanoscale tools and approaches to understand and treat cancer. Both Centers are charged to draw young faculty into interdisciplinary research, to prepare students and postdocs for successful careers focused on quantitative, systems level analyses of complex biomedical processes, especially cancer, and to educate the public about new tools and technologies that should lead to improvements in human health.