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I want to welcome you all. It is clearly a back-to-school meeting, and everybody is here, so that is terrific. I, too, want to welcome you, Seth [Vensil], delighted that you are here and thank Nick [Furtwengler] for his extraordinary service to the Board of Trustees, and we all wish you the very, very best.
Our new academic year got off to a great start last Wednesday, but I am going to save that for Caroline Miller, who will be telling you about our great enrollment news. I will talk to you about some other happenings. Three University of Cincinnati law students were featured on the A&E television pilot episode for a new series called “Innocence Files.” Adam Eckstein, Jeanelle Gonzalez-Kelly and Ryan Kelsey – all third-year students in the college this year – served as an Ohio Innocence Project team last year developing the case of inmate Glenn Tinney.
UC as well as engineering researcher Sang Son are among the first awardees to receive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) new Genes, Environment and Health Initiative (GEI), a unique collaboration between geneticists and environmental scientists. The research is intended to better understand the complex factors that contribute to health and disease.
A $5.5 million gift has established the James J. and Joan A. Gardner Family Center for Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders at the Neuroscience Institute at University Hospital and our College of Medicine. The gift from the James J. and Joan A. Gardner Family Foundation will endow clinical and research programs while accelerating collaboration among scientists and physicians.
UC psychologist Robert Frank has found that the sense of smell can be a first casualty of degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, and other problems outside the typical sensory loss associated with aging. His research on this important topic was featured in the August 14 edition of The New York Times. The story focused on the “Sniff Magnitude Test” invented by Frank and UC biologist Robert Gesteland. The test is under further development with the WR Medical Electronics Company in Stillwater, Minnesota.
UC has formed a strategic partnership with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and University Hospital to establish a joint cancer center that will coordinate oncology care from childhood to adulthood in southern Ohio and beyond. A total of up to $60 million in seed money has been committed during the next five years by the founding institutions to move this important partnership forward.
The College of Engineering has received a gift of nearly $1.5 million to support a chair in biomedical engineering. The gift, from Dane and Mary Louise Miller, has allowed the chair to be assumed by Peixuan Guo, who most recently served as the director of NIH Nanomedicine Center at Purdue University. The new chair is credited with constructing the most powerful bio-motor to date and demonstrating that RNA can serve as building blocks for nano-devices.
Ten UC architecture students took on the challenge of building UC’s campus in 3D. We are so used to flat, one dimensional maps and way finding, but these outstanding students have made it 3D. The challenge was part of a national competition sponsored by Google. All 10 of the UC student competing were among 40 finalists chosen in the competition that included 4,000 campus models from hundreds of universities.
Researchers at UC College of Medicine have been awarded a $9 million five-year grant to find new ways to improve and personalize treatments for bipolar disorder, and to better understand how to identify this brain disorder earlier with the goal of preventing disease progression. Bipolar disorder affects close to 6 million Americans each year and is recognized as one of the leading causes of disability worldwide.
And, finally, of the 27 colleges of pharmacy which were reviewed for accreditation for 2006-07, only five received full accreditation. Not surprisingly, our Winkle College of Pharmacy was one of the five and received three commendations. This accomplishment is very indicative of the quality of our Winkle College of Pharmacy. So, lots of bragging points to talk about today.
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