VCU Life Sciences wins biotechnology award

By Lorraine Cichowski
VCU News Services

RICHMOND, Va. – Virginia Commonwealth University’s Life Sciences program has been named the recipient of the 2001 Virginia Biotechnology Initiative Award.

The honor was granted to VCU Life Sciences Monday night at the joint awards banquet for the Virginia Biotechnology Association annual convention and the Governor's Conference on Human Genomics, the Family and the Law, held in Alexandria, Va. The award recognizes VCU’s efforts to create innovative courses, cutting-edge multidisciplinary research facilities and aggressive public education projects as a comprehensive response to the 21st century revolution in the life sciences.

Accepting the award on behalf of VCU Life Sciences was Thomas F. Huff, Ph.D., VCU vice provost for life sciences and professor of microbiology and Immunology. "VCU Life Sciences offers opportunities to students to learn about living systems in a comprehensive and challenging new way," said Dr. Huff. "It is an honor to be recognized by Virginia’s biotechnology elite."

VCU President Eugene P. Trani, Ph.D., has made it a top priority to position VCU as a leader among U.S. universities in teaching the life sciences, including such areas of study as biotechnology, forensics, environmental sciences, biomedical engineering and bioinformatics. "These disciplines will dominate scientific learning for years to come, and VCU is committed to preparing our students for the careers that will result from the explosion in the life sciences," Trani said.

VCU has made major strides accomplishing Trani’s plan for the study of the life sciences.

This fall, VCU introduced Life Sciences 101 as a unique survey course taught to 250 first-year students by the university’s top faculty members and scholars from departments and schools across both the Academic and Medical College of Virginia campuses. The lectures are intended to introduce the freshmen to a broad range of life sciences topics and issues, including ethical conduct of research and the role of genes in disease and behavior. A major emphasis of Life Sciences 101 is the concept of biological complexity, said Huff. Traditionally, scientists have tried to understand biological systems by studying their individual parts, with a lesser emphasis on defining the principles of interactions between the parts. "Now, with a much more integrative approach, combined with discovery science and massive computer assets, we have a chance to understand something that has always been a black box for us -- how the tens of thousands of parts fit together in biological systems, all the way from a cell as the most basic unit of biological life, to human behavior and to global ecosystems," Huff said.

Another recent accomplishment of the VCU Life Sciences initiative is acquisition of the Rice Center for Environmental Life Sciences, a 342-acre property on the James River that VCU will use to expand its research on the quality of life as it applies to ecology and public health.

On Nov. 15, VCU will officially dedicate the Eugene P. and Lois E. Trani Life Sciences Center on the Academic Campus. The four-floor facility houses the Department of Biology and the Center for Environmental Studies and supports the Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, Mathematical Sciences and Physics departments. It includes 18 undergraduate laboratories and a top-floor greenhouse.