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Strategic Priorities - RESEARCH
The Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine is ideally situated at the basic sciences/clinical sciences interface, within a top medical school, on one of the premier biological sciences campuses in the world. This places the Department in an advantageous position for realizing goals in the generation of new knowledge, through excellence in the basic biomedical sciences, and in translational research that converts new biomedical insights into procedures with direct applications for improving clinical diagnostics and patient care. The Department seeks to continue to build and maintain a world-class faculty with research interests and recognized excellence in the strategically targeted areas of cancer biology, neuroscience, immunopathology, and growth factor/matrix biology. In addition to the generation of both scientific and clinical advances, our research programs also aim to generate the highest caliber of future scientists through our graduate program in Cellular and Molecular Pathology, which leads to the Ph.D. degree. We also afford opportunities for Pathology residents and fellows to pursue research objectives in the Department’s laboratories, with the guidance of Departmental faculty.
Goals and Initiatives: To advance the above objectives, the Department plans to:
Recruit Highest Caliber Faculty in Strategically Targeted Areas
- Advertise nationally in high visibility journals (e.g. Science, N. Eng J Med, Amer. J. Pathology) for all faculty positions with a research component, and recruit “relentlessly” until positions are filled by candidates of the highest quality and credentials.
- Recruit, where possible, researchers with expertise in the strategically targeted areas. Candidates of outstanding abilities and promise who have expertise/interest in other research areas will be added to the faculty, as such opportunities present themselves.
Establish and Achieve High External Support Standards
- Expect each tenure track faculty member to have funding from two major grants or to continue the application process until such funding levels are achieved.
- Employ Research and Development funding as seed money for meritorious projects of clinical/CHS faculty. Such funding will be competitive, with applications made to the TRIP lab directorship, who will present recommendations to the full Research Committee. Preference will be for projects geared towards developing data for future applications for extramural funding, and for clinical faculty who have not come to the TRIP/Research Committee for funding in the previous 3 yrs).
- Employ R&D monies as an incentive to tenure track faculty to seek extramural funding. Such funding will be competitive and will be awarded solely to tenure track faculty who submit proposals that are rated most highly by the Department Research Committee, and which are accompanied by evidence that funding is insurance for extramural grant proposals.
Develop Quality Research Space for Investigators
- Analyze current space allocations
- Eliminate inequities in research space/funding ratios (this process will be evolutionary, not revolutionary)
- Identify and secure new research space. As both a clinical and a basic science department, we will seek unification at the western campus. In the meantime, we will obtain MSC backfill space as it becomes available.
Integrate Basic and Clinical Science Expertise in Research Enterprise
- Broadcast Department seminars to CSC, perhaps via videostreaming on the Department website. Provide CME’s for Department seminars.
- Publicize fellowship for year of research in a laboratory for residents (there may be a national search for a recipient of a 2 or 3 yr fellowship).
Optimize Administrative Support for Grants and Grant Applications
- Conduct a survey of research faculty to determine ways in which administration of grants and support for grant applications can be optimized by the Department.
Develop and Enhance Core Research Facilities
- Support faculty projects in the TRIP lab, although the TRIP should aim to generate a cash flow and not be entirely supported by Departmental funds. The TRIP lab should plan for provision of specialty services that could attract subcontracts from grants of PI’s and provide service for fees campus-wide.
- Tissue/Tumor banks established within the Department should be appropriate to programmatic needs of the Department (see Patient Care Goals and Initiatives).
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