LSInsights

The Future in Life Sciences

President Mary Sue Coleman, University of Michigan

We have achieved the critical mass envisioned eight years ago by President Bollinger and the Life Sciences Commission. And across campus we are realizing great advances and taking on exciting challenges in the life sciences, in areas ranging from nanobiology to stem cell research to diabetes research and more.

The Life Sciences Institute is the crux at U-M for emerging opportunities, strategic bearings, and collaborative possibilities in the life sciences. Collaboration will be an essential feature of our future work in life sciences—and other areas as well. Not only has the Life Sciences Institute been instrumental in the recruitment and retention of outstanding scientists in a number of departments, it has brought to the fore synergies that are unique to Michigan, particularly between engineering and the sciences.

We have few peers with such profound combined strengths in engineering, medicine and the sciences. We are on the threshold of understanding life and living organisms at the most basic level, and our enthusiasm for multidisciplinary science makes that possible.

First and foremost is our quest for knowledge. It is the bedrock of our academic enterprise, and is one that we must continually reinforce and deepen to address the complexities of today's world. The Life Sciences Institute stretches broadly and deeply through the academy: the physical space, the atmosphere, the environment, and the personalities build the laboratories of collaborative science necessary in knowledge building in today's world.

The value and importance of science that crosses academic borders, and that the interests of faculty and students span structural biology, chemistry, disease models, genetics, translational research, and biochemistry. This interplay between experts is essential to modern scientific discovery.

The Life Sciences Institute, with the Undergraduate Science Building, Palmer Commons, and the Biomedical Science Research Building together represent nearly a million square feet of new space devoted to the three pillars of our life sciences effort: research, collaboration and education.

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