About LSI

Our Vision

The Institute is a hub for collaboration among outstanding scientists from a variety of life science disciplines focusing on the biological problems of human health. Biomedical science increasingly demands that scientists work in interdisciplinary teams to make sense of vast stores of information generated by the capacity of modern scientific and informatics-based tools. By bringing scientists with different backgrounds and approaches together in a unique open-laboratory facility, the Institute sparks new ideas and projects that accelerate our understanding of life and our progress toward treating disease.

Through its core resources and initiatives, the Institute creates crossroads for all UM faculty and students to engage across fields and other academic boundaries. Located directly between UM’s medical campus and central humanities campus, the LSI serves as a physical and intellectual bridge linking the basic life science areas with medicine, public health, engineering, law and business. The Institute actively participates in the regional life sciences industry community to promote economic development through the development, licensing and spin out of new technologies and discoveries.

Letter From The Director

We are now in the midst of a transformational change in science. The combinations of genetic, computational, biochemical and chemical tools now at our fingertips have generated many new ways to attack problems in biology, on a scale never imagined. Of course, this paradigm shift brings with it new challenges, particularly the challenge of collaboration. How will we entice investigators to communicate across their diverse areas of expertise and training, to cooperate in ways that provide true synergy?

Read The Full Text of the Letter From The Director

Letter From The President of UM

Read The Full Text of the Letter From UM President Mary Sue Coleman

See also: Real Video clip of Research Professor Rowena Matthews on the LSI's Vision