UTHealth Fact Book

Two new Deans, Michelle Barton, PhD, and Michael Blackburn, PhD, were both named leaders of The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS) on July 1, 2012. Their vision is to maintain an innovative and diverse environment that provides an unprecedented breadth of opportunity for top graduate students to train with faculty who are outstanding biomedical scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MD Anderson).

Dedicated to the highest level of education, GSBS faculty, classrooms, and laboratories are drawn from these two major institutions (UTHealth) and (MD Anderson) and provide a unique, interdisciplinary collaborative model of graduate education. Authorized by the 58^th Legislature in 1963, GSBS today educates the future PhD and MS biomedical scientists and combined MD/PhD graduates for both University of Texas components. The mission of GSBS is to educate research scientists and scientist-educators, to generate new knowledge in the biomedical sciences that is translated into improved health, and to increase public understanding of science. As a public institution its charge is to train the scientists of tomorrow to meet the workforce needs of the state and nation.

Instructional Programs

The School offers PhD and MS degrees and a joint MD/PhD physician-scientist program and is fully accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Over 520 students are working toward degrees with approximately 70 students graduating annually. The student body includes approximately 36 percent of its population from Texas, 26 percent from the United States (not including TX), and 38% who are international students; 56 percent women and 44 percent men. Annually GSBS provides in excess of $1 million in scholarship, fellowship and stipend support annually for scholastic excellence and research achievement.

2012 Fall faculty included 522 full time members plus additional adjunct faculty. This large and distinguished group encompasses two members of the National Academy of Science, four Pew Scholars, a Fulbright Lifetime Achievement member and numerous recipients of other honors, awards and professional recognition.

Faculty of our participating institutions consistently receive nearly $300 million in research support annually from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, which ranks in the top 5 percent of NIH funding in the world. In addition, of our clinical partners, Memorial Hermann was the first hospital founded in the Texas Medical Center and is one of only two certified Level I Trauma Centers in the greater Houston area, and US News & World Report ranked MD Anderson the #1 Cancer Hospital in the United States.

Known for its educational philosophy of excellence through flexibility and personal attention, GSBS gives students the opportunity to join an established program to suit their professional goals. Nationally ranked programs include biochemistry and molecular biology, biomathematics and biostatistics, cancer biology, cell and regulatory biology, experimental therapeutics, genes and development, genetic counseling, human and molecular genetics, immunology, medical physics, microbiology and molecular genetics, molecular carcinogenesis, and neuroscience.

Facilities

The Graduate School, including the Dean’s Office and Administrative personnel, is located in the George and Cynthia Mitchell Basic Sciences Research Building where it is housed in the June & Virgil Waggoner Academic Hall. Complete with state of the art classrooms, computer lab, auditorium, and telecom capabilities for beaming classes and lectures around the globe, it is geared for a growing and dynamic student population.

The research facilities and related resources available to GSBS students are unmatched anywhere in the world. The collaborative nature of the graduate school, with world-class faculty from UTHealth, MD Anderson Cancer Center and Texas A&M Institute for Biosciences & Technology, is expanded throughout the Texas Medical Center – the largest medical center in the world with 21 academic institutions and 14 hospitals. The graduate school has developed academic arrangements (including shared research and classroom facilities) with other institutions both individually, and through the Gulf Coast Consortium (GCC) that includes the region’s most prominent academic institutions – MD Anderson, UTHealth, University of Texas Medical Branch, Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Houston.

GSBS students and their faculty mentors have access to more than 60 core laboratory facilities and specialized instrumentation through these and other collaborative agreements. During the past decade, more than 2 million square feet of research space has been added to UTHealth and MD Anderson, including the continued, joint development of the University of Texas Research Park, designed to foster major collaborative efforts and link academic and commercial research as partners in molecular imaging, drug discovery and development, diagnostics, and other translational research opportunities. This expansion includes several new centers and institutes that provide students with additional collaborative research environments across traditional departmental and programmatic boundaries.

source: Linda Carter, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

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