letter from the chair
Dear Colleagues, Prospective Students, and Friends:
As we reach the end of our first year as a Department and begin our second year, I am writing to reflect on what we have accomplished and our plans for the future. The Department of Biomedical Informatics at Arizona State University was formed in March 2007, with a strong research mandate, but with a twist that takes advantage of its unique situation and setting. The department is part of the School of Computing and Informatics in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, but is located on the downtown Phoenix campus of the University of Arizona College of Medicine. It is also next door to Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), in a rapidly developing biomedical enterprise zone in downtown Phoenix.
Our beautiful new building, which had its grand opening on October 15, 2007, has over 44,000 sq. ft. devoted to BMI, and is equipped with high speed networking, videoconferencing, including a state-of-the-art “medpresence” telesuite, and many flexible spaces. Most important is the spirit of innovation and adventure. A new curriculum for the medical students integrates informatics concepts, methods, and applications from the outset. The MS program in biomedical informatics began in Fall, 2007, and a PhD program begins in Fall, 2008.
Thanks to a generous startup budget, we are gearing up rapidly in all the major areas of BMI, with several new additions to our faculty and others planned over the next couple of years. Research programs are already underway in bioinformatics, imaging informatics, clinical informatics, public health informatics, and cross-cutting areas such as data mining/predictive modeling, knowledge representation, cognitive science, medical simulation, and embedded sensors/sensor networks.
The growth that has been occurring all around us can only be considered extraordinary. The enthusiasm, shared vision, and eagerness to collaborate by clinical partners both nearby and across Phoenix and Arizona, including Banner Health, Barrow Neurological Institute, TGen, Maricopa Integrated Health System, the Veterans Administration, and Mayo Clinic, as well as several state agencies and other entities, have resulted in the initiation of a number of research partnerships and joint educational ventures. We are pleased to report that in our first year, the BMI faculty have already received $9.1 M in research funding commitments.
We look forward to our next year, and to continued development and expansion of our programs. Watch this space!
Sincerely,
Robert A. Greenes, M.D., Ph.D.
Ira A. Fulton Chair and Professor
Department of Biomedical Informatics
Arizona State University