Celebrating a Decade of Connections with the Texas Medical Center

This spring marks the 10-year anniversary of Texas A&M University’s Institute of Biosciences and Technology’s official opening in the Texas Medical Center.

Developing the institute was a concept envisioned in the 1980s to provide a bridge between Texas A&M University scientists and other institutions and researchers working in the Texas Medical Center, as well as the growing biotechnology research community in Houston. Groundbreaking for the institute’s 11-story building took place in January 1989, and the building’s official dedication was April 3, 1992.

From the beginning, the institute’s founding principle was to create bridges of collaboration between Institute of Biosciences and Technology scientists and others working in all fields of biosciences and biotechnology. Another founding principle was to encourage the technology transfer of discoveries made in the Institute of Biosciences and Technology laboratories to the marketplace.

As the institute has grown and developed, its basic mission remains fundamentally unchanged – namely, to provide an academic and scientific bridge between Texas A&M University System faculty and the medical institutions and biotechnology enterprises in the Texas Medical Center. Dr. Robert D. Wells, founding director, former head of the department of biochemistry and biophysics at Texas A&M University, guided the institute’s research laboratories. He was succeeded as director in 1994 by Dr. Fuller W. Bazer, who now serves as associate vice chancellor for agriculture and executive associate dean of agriculture at Texas A&M University.

Last June, Dr. Richard H. Finnell became the third director of the Institute of Biosciences and Technology. He continues the tradition of close linkages not only to colleagues in the Texas A&M University System Health Science Center, of which the institute is now a component, but also with Texas A&M University in College Station. Dr. Finnell came to the institute from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, where he was director of the Center for Human Molecular Genetics and professor in the departments of pediatrics, and cell biology and anatomy. Prior to assuming his position in Nebraska, he was a professor in the departments of veterinary anatomy and public health, and associate dean for research at Texas A&M University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

Research interests between the Institute of Biosciences and Technology and Texas A&M have also been strengthened with the recent appointment of Dr. Stephen Safe as director of the institute’s newest research center, the Margaret M. Alkek Center for Environmental and Genetic Medicine. He will serve in this capacity at the Institute of Biosciences and Technology in Houston, while maintaining his faculty appointment in the department of veterinary physiology and pharmacology at Texas A&M University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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