Rice University hosted an all-day symposium on Nov. 28, 2006 at Trevisio in the Texas Medical Center. The symposium explored opportunities to further enhance, and build new successful research collaborations between researchers at Rice and the other TMC institutions. Researchers had the opportunity to initiate and expand collaborative interactions in areas of mutual interest.

>> Symposium Agenda print as pdf document

The strong turnout for the Nov. 28 Collaborative Research Symposium that Rice hosted at Trevisio in the Texas Medical Center (TMC) reflects the eagerness of researchers from TMC institutions to work together.

More than 230 registrants from 10 TMC institutions attended the symposium, at which 25 speakers presented a broad sampling of collaborative research and stimulated ideas for future initiatives that could capitalize on the institutions' complementary capabilities. Such research efforts are well-suited for the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) that Rice plans to build at the corner of University Boulevard and Main Street.

"One of the things we're concerned about and why a symposium like this is so important is that it gives people the opportunity to learn what else is going on," said Leonard Zwelling, vice president of research administration at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. "As with all the other institutions in the medical center, we have grown so fast and so much that we don't even know what each other is doing sometimes, and it's certainly true of the other institutions.

"We're hoping that by having one place, a focus where all this research might go on, we may address that breakdown in some of the barriers," Zwelling said during a panel discussion.

"Both the registration and the actual attendance at the symposium exceeded expectations, and the degree of interest and engagement was both evident and gratifying," said Rice Provost Eugene Levy, noting that the event was just the beginning of an ongoing process to substantially increase collaboration on research and education among Rice and major TMC institutions.

Many 21st-century advances in biomedicine and in other areas of science more broadly will require significant increases in the kinds of interdisciplinary collaboration discussed at the symposium and planned for the CRC.

Presentations ranged from successful case studies, such as a collaboration among Rice, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine on the computational design of cancer therapeutics, to areas with a technology focus, such as a collaboration among Texas Children's Hospital and Rice on biostatistics and bioinformatics, to emerging areas, such as a collaboration among Baylor and M.D. Anderson on stem cells and regenerative medicine.

The keynote address by Rice's Jennifer West and Baylor's Karen Hirschi gave them a chance to discuss their three-year, $2.9 million Quantum Project Grant from the National Institutes of Health for an international research initiative to regenerate damaged brain cells and blood vessels for the treatment of stroke. West is the Isabel C. Cameron Professor of Bioengineering and director of Rice's Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering. Hirschi is deputy director of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center within Baylor's Center for Cell and Gene Therapy. They are the first and only recipients of the inaugural Quantum Project Grant funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.

A panel discussion at the end of the symposium was "especially noteworthy," Levy said, because of "the degree to which speakers emphasized the importance of co-location and the establishment of a venue to serve as the focal point for collaboration, both within and as a center in which to bring researchers from our various institutions together to stimulate greater collaborations reaching out from the center and into all of our institutions."