If you want to keep a high profile in the biological sciences, you have to change with the times. So says Dr. James Carrington, the new director of OSU's Molecular and Cellular Biology Graduate program. Carrington is overseeing a major upgrade of the activities and facilities available to MCB students — an upgrade that will benefit the wide cross-section of departments currently involved with the program, and draw in others from an even broader spectrum of disciplines.
In the last decade, there has been a radical transformation in the biosciences. This transformation is due, in part, to the new field of genomics, which deals with the systematic use of an organism's hereditary information to provide answers in such areas as biology, medicine, and industry. The explosion of genome-based data has shifted the entire approach to bioscience-related research, away from descriptions at the single gene, single protein level, and toward digital, information-based science.
"A typical experiment in molecular and cellular biology today generates vastly more data than what we could generate 10 years ago," Carrington says. "This means that data collection is no longer the challenge. Now, it's all about analysis: understanding what all the data mean. And importantly, these data are opening new fields of study that were not possible before."
Carrington has been at OSU since 2001 as a professor of botany and plant pathology. He also directs OSU's Center for Gene Research and Biotechnology, which provides facilities and services for computational and genome-oriented research and education. In that role, and now as head of the Molecular and Cellular Biology Graduate program, he is leading efforts to integrate new and innovative combinations of mathematical, computational, and system-wide biological approaches that cross conventional disciplinary boundaries.
"This has been a priority of mine for several years now," Carrington says. "I'm making new connections with faculty in departments like computer science and mathematics with the hope of drawing in disciplines that have been underrepresented in the program. They may come in as mentors to graduate students, or they may get involved in the curriculum. The new paradigm for high-impact bioscience research and education involves teams of scientists combining broad disciplinary expertise, and I see great potential here at OSU."
OSU's Molecular and Cellular Biology program has always stressed collaboration among departments. Graduate students take an MCB core curriculum of courses and seminar series, and do research rotations in the laboratories of MCB program faculty. But they apply that training in research and adjunct courses that fit their specialized interests, choosing advisors from more than 84 faculty members in 15 participating departments.
"Our MCB program emerged from the state-of-the-art science that was being done in many different departments - zoology, microbiology, plant pathology, and so forth," Carrington says. "It was designed to lower barriers, so that departmental structures would not hold back science and the education of graduate students. Now we're taking that concept even further, to where we not only intersect departments, but also integrate very different disciplines."
Earlier this year, the University formalized its commitment to this interdisciplinary approach by sponsoring the Computational and Genomic Biology Initiative. It's one of six key initiatives that OSU will support in a five-year, $10 million drive toward research and education in promising fields.
The initiative will allow the hiring of three new faculty members with broad expertise in computational and genome biology, to take leadership roles in expanding and revising the MCB graduate curriculum and strengthening research programs and facilities. A consortium of colleges and departments is conducting the search for these new faculty members using an open recruitment model: each professor will be based in whatever department best fits his or her interests. The initiative will also fund two new graduate fellowships for each of the next five years, and help evolve core facilities for research.
To lay the groundwork for the new initiative, OSU's Center for Gene Research and Biotechnology has been investing generously in genome and computational biology research, education, and core facilities. Over the last three years, CGRB has put $1.5 million into state-of-the-art facilities for genomics and functional genomics, imaging, and biocomputing. This investment has been instrumental in the garnering of another $9 million in grant funding for projects with genomic and bioinformatics elements.
There's a highly receptive job market waiting for students who graduate with training in these advanced fields. It includes universities, government labs and agencies, and private corporations in biology, medicine, and industry.
"Increasingly, the type of person they're hiring is the one who has excellent quantitative skills in addition to knowledge of biological systems," says Carrington. "They're interested in people who understand how to collect large amounts of data using advanced instrumentation, and who can analyze this data using creative computational skills. We'll be training scientists in the MCB program who have those skills."
For more information: http://www.cgrb.orst.edu/mcb/
