Our path lies in focused excellence. We must continually evaluate the intersection of our strengths, needs, and areas of scientific growth with the moving target of funding opportunities. We must strike a balance between investments in our traditional areas of strength and newly emerging research areas, while supporting the associated infrastructure and enabling technologies needed for success. We must balance this focused approach with an academic freedom that leaves room for discoveries born through serendipity. By facilitating collaborations, we will foster innovative biomedical research that leads to advances that improve health.
We will build on our research areas of strength and cultivate new ones by:
We will support our discovery programs by:
As illustrated above, the College's discovery program is comprised of three elements: a key research infrastructure, expertise in fundamental technologies and experimental approaches, and multidisciplinary teams pursuing research in areas of clinical relevance.
The diagram is a simplification, since it underestimates the extent of intersection among the experimental approaches and overlap among the disease focus areas. Nevertheless, the diagram illustrates the College's commitment to providing a strong research infrastructure and a contemporary research portfolio that together enable us to bring multiple types of inquiry to bear on important biomedical problems.
Interdisciplinary research by teams or individuals integrates the analytical strengths of two or more scientific disciplines to solve complex questions and problems that extend beyond the scope of a single discipline.
Multidisciplinary research by teams or individuals refers to a process in which researchers in different disciplines collaborate on a research question or problem, but work within their discipline.
Translational research is the process of applying ideas, insights and discoveries generated through basic scientific inquiry to the diagnosis, prevention or treatment of a disease or injury. It is commonly known as "bench-to-bedside" research.
Clinical research is the study of a drug, biologic or device in human subjects with the intent to discover potential beneficial effects and/or determine its safety and efficacy.
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