Interdisciplinary Spirit: A Rochester Hallmark
Our CTSI thrives largely because the program exploits a central feature of our institution: Our people are collaborators who invest in each other and work effectively in teams that cross boundaries. Every day through CTSI, senior-level researchers meet with junior investigators, teaching them the ropes to begin a successful research portfolio.
Nicholas Jospe and Deborah Fowell
Collaboration is enhanced in more formal ways as well. For example, the institute awarded its first Incubator Program prize to a team of scientists who span an array of disciplines – neurology, microbiology, cardiology, and immunology – in an unusual collaboration to explore whether promising compounds to fight dementia might also play a role in treating heart failure. It’s the type of project where we excel – scientists working easily with colleagues across campus to move ahead together in a way that would be impossible for any single laboratory to do alone.
Additional examples of cross-disciplinary projects include:
- Researchers at the School of Nursing working with psychologists to show that happily married people recover more fully from coronary bypass surgery than their unmarried counterparts.
- Physicians at Golisano Children’s Hospital partnering with scientists in the Center for Vaccine Biology and Immunology to analyze in exceptional detail the very first steps that occur as a child becomes diabetic.
Microbiologists in the Center for Oral Biology, part of the Eastman Institute for Oral Health, making a key finding about how bacteria that normally inhabit our mouth can cause a lethal heart infection.
