On June 19, the USM Board of Regents approved recommendations issued by an ad hoc committee appointed which will result in the alignment of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI) centers with other USM institutions.

Recommendations include:

Establish a joint USM research center at the Center for Advanced Research in Biotechology (CARB) facilities in Rockville. The University of Maryland, College Park will have administrative responsibility in collaboration with UMB. The joint center will build on the University of Maryland's strengths in physics, engineering, chemistry, and computational sciences; and UMB's strengths in structural biology, protein design, and new drug discovery.

Assign the resources of the Center for Biosystems Research (CBR) to the University of Maryland, College Park. This will increase the level of inter-institutional collaboration that is already occurring between the university and CBR.

Establish a joint USM research center at the Center of Marine Biotechnology (COMB) facility in Baltimore. The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) will have administrative responsibility and will collaborate with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) and UMB, particularly UMB's Institute for Genome Sciences. In addition, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) will have a role in the center.

Assign the resources of the Medical Biotechnology Center (MBC) to UMB. UMB is the home of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and its Institute for Human Virology. In addition, research here will be enhanced by collaboration with the bioengineering and computational faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Assign the resources of the Institute of Fluorescence (IOF) to UMBC. Located in the COMB facility, the institute already has strong collaborations with UMBC faculty.

Assign the resources of UMBI's K-12 educational programs to Towson University. Towson is well known for its focus on preparing allied health professionals and educators to teach in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics)-related fields.

In a related action this month, the USM Board of Regents has appointed Edward Eisenstein as acting president of UMBI, effective July 1. Eisenstein served as director of CARB in Rockville for eight years. He will succeed UMBI President Jennie Hunter-Cevera, who will step down from the position June 30.

Tags: June 2009

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 11:54 am