Science of the same mind
WPI, UMass Med. School form research partnership
In light of tight local funding for biotechnology and biopharmaceutical research in and around Worcester, Gov. Deval Patrick has stressed the need for collaboration and shared resources to keep the biotech ball rolling in Central Massachusetts.
In the spirit of that call for collaboration, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the University of Massachusetts Medical School recently started a $200,000 initiative to help foster joint research and development programs.
Dennis Berkey, president of WPI, said the idea for the collaborative effort came out of a dinner party he held at his home this spring with faculty members from both schools.
Seed money
As part of the agreement, each school contributed $100,000 apiece in seed money to create a fund to encourage faculty from each school to collaborate on life sciences projects.
Berkey said faculty from each school will now be able to apply for seed grants from the fund to help kick-start joint ventures.
"The idea is they would use these funds to start a project, then apply for major funding from the usual federal agencies to keep it going," he said.
Berkey said the two Worcester schools were a natural fit for this type of program.
"WPI has strong engineering and technical expertise, in addition to strong basic sciences. UMass has the clinical capabilities and very strong science expertise as well," he said. "The idea was to put the two things together and create a complete chain that takes form as a basic idea and grows into a clinical application at a patient's bedside."
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