The John S. Dunn Research Foundation has awarded a $3 million grant to Rice University to "jump-start" collaborative research studies in biomedical science that have the potential for clinical applications.
The funds will support seed grants for Rice researchers whose studies will be conducted at the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) that Rice is building on the corner of University Boulevard and Main Street. To qualify for a seed grant, the researcher must collaborate with scientists or physicians from other institutions in the Texas Medical Center.
"The underlying purpose of the Collaborative Research Center is to bring Rice scientists together with our colleagues in the medical center so they can work across disciplines in conducting the research necessary to achieve fundamental breakthroughs in the biosciences," said Rice President David Leebron. "This generous grant from the John S. Dunn Research Foundation will help us achieve that goal. The new ideas that take root from these seed grants could lead to major discoveries that ultimately result in life-saving breakthroughs in health and medical care."
The first round of seed grants will be limited to cross-institutional teams of researchers within the CRC who have not collaborated previously and whose work shows potential for clinical use in the near future.
"A wise investor seeks long-term growth, and that's what we hope to achieve through our investment in seed grants to Rice that encourage collaboration among highly competitive scientists and physicians in the Texas Medical Center," said Charles W. Hall, president of the John S. Dunn Research Foundation. "Ideally, by sharing expertise and costly technology, the recipients of these research grants will discover treatments and design devices that benefit health care and science for many decades to come."
The late John Dunn Sr. established the Dunn Research Foundation in 1977 to support organizations and programs engaged in biomedical, educational and research programs, primarily in the Greater Houston area. The foundation has awarded $1.5 million in various grants to Rice.
Recipients of the John S. Dunn Collaborative Research Awards will be selected each year by a committee appointed by the Oversight Committee for the Gulf Coast Consortia. GCC members include Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, University of Houston, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Its mission is to build interdisciplinary collaborative research teams and training programs in the biological sciences that involve the computational, chemical, mathematical and physical sciences.
The Dunn Research Foundation is a longtime supporter of collaborative research through the Gulf Coast Consortia. Two of the GCC's research consortia are named for the foundation: the John S. Dunn Gulf Coast Consortium for Chemical Genomics and the John S. Dunn Gulf Coast Consortium for Magnetic Resonance.
The Collaborative Research Center will house the consortia's new offices, which will be named for John S. Dunn in recognition of the foundation's support of the GCC and collaborative research efforts.
The 10-story CRC was designed to facilitate joint research between Rice's experts in biological sciences, engineering, computation, and the physical and mathematical sciences and Texas Medical Center physicians and scientists. The building is scheduled to open in 2009.