The T90R90 grant, earmarked specifically for bionano training and research, was awarded to UH through the school's Institute for Molecular Design (IMD) for the Keck Center for Computational and Structural Biology. The grant will be disbursed to undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students over the course of the next five years as competitive fellowships among those at UH, Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. These institutions make up the Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC), a group designed to combine institutional strengths to train new scientists, establish a research infrastructure to collect data, cultivate a supportive atmosphere for both biological and non-biological researchers and students, and apply the resulting knowledge to prevent and treat diseases.

"This grant substantiates the fact that you can't separate research and training," said B. Montgomery Pettitt, principal investigator for this grant and Cullen Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, professor of physics, biology and biochemistry, and associate dean of computational and computer science for the UH College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. "Like anything, research is a practiced art, and the discoveries that result are what come from hands-on training. Grants like this give students experience in doing research, as well as helping them find out what areas they excel in and should likely pursue further."

Just as the GCC melds training and research, this National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant reinforces a similar approach to scientific education.
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Contact: Lisa Merkl
lkmerkl@uh.edu
713-743-8192
University of Houston
19-Oct-2004