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F A L L / W I N T E R 2 0 0 7

W H A T T H E K E C K

I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E :

BRIDGING MIND AND MOLECULE: Keck Center’s Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience at work

2

TEAM SCIENCE: How this year’s poster presenters teamed up at the Keck Annual Research

2

PERSONALIZED MEDICINE: GCC explores the new standard of healthcare

3

CALLS FOR APPLICATIONS: Check out Keck Center training opportunities

4

PHOTO SPREAD: Action photos of the Research Conference.

5

P. Read Montague, Brown Foundation Professor of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine.

Along with the keynote and plenary speakers, members of the panels included: Neal Lane, Malcolm Gillis University Professor and former Director of the NSF, Rice University; William R. Brinkley, Senior Vice President and Dean of the Graduate School, Baylor College of Medicine; Kathy Matthews, Stewart Memorial Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology and Dean of Natural Sciences, Rice University; and Robert D. Wells, Robert A. Welch Endowed Professor of Chemistry and Director, Center for Genome Research, Texas A&M University.

More than 190 Keck Fellows, students and faculty, as well as Houston-Galveston-area biomedical researchers gath-ered in October at the Keck Center’s 17th Annual Research Conference (ARC), “Science in Our Future.” The graduate students and postdoctoral fellows supported by the Keck Center and the Program in Structural and Computational Biology and Molecular Biophysics (SCBMB) presented their research results in team poster sessions (see related story on page 2) and platform talks. They, their mentors, and other biomedical researchers attended research presenta-tions and panel discussions by distinguished scientists from across the country.

The scientific lectures highlighted emerging areas of biomedical research that are shaping the future of research. Two panel discussions highlighted the challenges and opportunities facing research scientists over the next five and the next 20 years. Conference Co-Chair Stan Watowich, UT Medical Branch at Galveston, welcomed attendees, and Co-Chair Ted Wensel, Baylor College of Medicine, gave an overview of the Keck Center, the training arm of the Gulf Coast Consortia.

Keynote speaker was

Steven M. Block (above), S.W. Ascherman Professor of Sciences, Stanford University.

Plenary speakers included: Alan Lambowitz, Director, Insti-tute for Cellular & Molecular Biology, and Jason Shear, Associate Professor of Chemis-try and Biochemistry, University of Texas at Austin; Nipam H. Patel, Howard Hughes Investi-gator and Professor of Genetics and Development and of Integrative Biology, University of California at Berkeley; and

GCC / Keck Center

Member Institutions

For the first time at the Keck ARC, trainees were chosen to give platform talks. From left: CSBB predoc Suzanne Tomlinson (UTMB), BMDTP postdoc Seth Tomchik (BCM), Pharmacoinformatics predoc Lauren Becnel (BCM), and Nanobiology postdoc Hugo Sanabria (UTHSC-H).

T H E K E C K C E N T E R A D D S A N O T H E R T R A I N I N G G R A N T

S E L L I N G S O M E O N E E L S E ’ S W O R K

research from either public or private sources, and disseminating the purpose and benefits of research to the general public.

Five teams were selected to receive awards: Elizabeth Ostrowski (RU) and Kerry Fuson (UTMB); Anup Parikh (BCM) and JJ Heyd (UTHSC-H); Robert Malmstrom (UTMB) and Kim Mankiewicz (UTHSC-H); Mike Marsh (BCM) and Pam Constantinou (RU, pictured at left); and Ke Zhang (BCM) and Gidon Ofek (RU). The winners are invited to present their own research in brief talks at Keck Seminars on January 25 and February 15, 2008.

Participants had a chance to voice their opinions about the poster partnering. One trainee wrote, “At first I was opposed to

An important aspect of any annual conference is the poster competition, through which fellows gain skills in and receive feedback on their presentations. In a twist of the usual poster competition, the Keck Conference co-chairs paired graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from diverse subject areas based on their submitted abstracts.

Each member of the two-person team prepared a poster describing his/her own

Page 2 W H A T T H E K E C K

The Keck Center is the train-ing arm of the GCC and currently administers eight training programs with more than 70 trainees. Please check the GCC website at www.gulfcoastconsortia.org for more information about the TCN and other Keck Center training programs.

research project, then taught the partner to present the poster. This gave trainees the opportunity to coach someone outside their field on their research and how to present it, and to learn about and present their partner’s project to

judges, rather than their own research project.

“The idea was to teach some-one else to ‘sell’ your work using the elevator pitch model,” explained Ted Wensel, conference co-chair. (See related story on page 3.)

The effective communication of research goals and results to people in another field is an essential skill for working in multi-disciplinary research teams, securing funds for

it, but I really felt that in the end it was a benefit. The challenge to ‘sell’ someone else’s work is unique, and a refreshing departure from the normal paradigm for poster sessions.”

Another commented, “I actually enjoyed the experience of working with someone outside of my discipline on the poster presentations. I met someone I normally wouldn’t have and learned a great deal about another area of research and how others perceive my research.”

Training in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience (TCN), with five years of funding for four graduate students provided by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, is the newest Keck Center training program. TCN will support the education of future researchers who can apply the tools of mathematics, physics, computer science, computa-tional biology and bioengineer-ing to problems of brain re-search. Trainees are required to have two mentors from dif-ferent areas of research to foster an inter-disciplinary training experience.

"In addition to using theoreti-cal tools, the students will be trained in state-of-the-art experimental methods, specifically those for complex multidimensional data acquisition, processing and visualization, as these are most prominent in advanced imaging techniques," said Peter Saggau, professor in the Baylor College of Medicine department of neuroscience and P.I. of the new training program. "Training will be a well-balanced combination of classroom instruction and hands-on labs.”

Like other Keck Center training programs, this new

program is both interdiscipli-nary and multi-institutional, with 24 training faculty from all six GCC institutions.

Serving on the steering committee are Steve Cox, Rice University; Fabrizio Gabbiani, BCM; Kresimir Josic, University of Houston; Volker Neugebauer, UT Medical Branch at Galveston; Prahlad Ram, UT M. D. Ander-son Cancer Center; and Harel Shouval, UT Health Science Center-Houston.

Trainees to be appointed for the first year will be announced the week of December 10.

The biggest problem in under-standing someone else's research isn't understanding what they're doing -- it's understanding why they're doing it. Even if a person can follow what you're saying, it may still be difficult to process the details while maintaining a sense of the bigger picture...you still have to stop after each piece of data and remind them of how this one piece of information answers a part of the question AND how it still doesn't answer some other part of the question -- and then go on from there.

— Elizabeth Ostrowski, NLM postdoc, Rice University

“By using molecular analysis to achieve optimum medical out-comes in the management of a patient’s disease or disease predisposition, personalized medicine promises to introduce a new standard of healthcare. Current practice is ‘one size fits all,’ trial and error. Personalized medicine promises the right treat-ment for the right person at the right time.” – Edward Abrahams, Personalized Medicine Coalition (pictured at right)

“Personalized medicine can be broadly defined as an ap-proach that involves incorporat-ing diagnostic and therapeutic interventions based on integrating individual genotyp-ing with family and clinical histories. A key component of personalized medicine is

translating the science of pharmacogenomics into clinical practice.” – Amalia Issa, University of Houston “There is a revolutionary, expanded role of medicine called the 4Ps: predictive (DNA sequencing, blood protein measurements), personalized (patient as own control, unique individual), preventive (treating disease with drugs/vaccines, focus on wellness), and participatory (patient understands and participates in choices). Our goal is to migrate basic science into 4P

and interesting and to want to know more?

Originally the elevator pitch was designed to assist entrepreneurs who, suddenly seeing their dream investor step into an elevator, must convey the essentials about their product/service/company before Mr. or Ms. Moneybags Investor gets off. But now lots of people – job seekers, evangelists, U.S. Congressmen -- in lots of fields use the elevator pitch. Think of it as an important communications and teaching tool – without the excruciating details. A goal of a good elevator pitch is to schedule a second meeting. Why is it important for scientists to communicate to non-scientists about their research?

In Neal Lane’s discussion of the Civic Scientist, he relates that scientists need to

An elevator pitch is not what you may think. It’s not the angle of the elevator, nor a reference to music that may accompany your brief ride. But 74 eager, or frustrated, poster presenters at the Keck Annual Research Conference got to do one.

The elevator pitch is a con-cise, carefully planned, and well-practiced description (sound familiar?) about your research project that your mother should be able to un-derstand in about the time it takes to ride up an elevator – or, in our scientists’ case, extended to include the walk out the door and to the car, about 2-5 minutes.

It’s seizing the moment to capture the attention, and maybe the imagination, of someone who doesn’t know your field. What would you say to compel others to think you are up to something totally cool

expand their roles outside of the laboratory and give the general public the opportunity to see accomplished scientific work, hopefully promoting science and technology as a public good worthy of federal, state, and local funding. Elevator Pitch 101 1. Concise – short 2. Clear – lose the jargon, please 3. Compelling – you are solving a problem

T H E P R O M I S E O F P E R S O N A L I Z E D M E D I C I N E : e x c e r p t s f r o m t h e G C C W o r k s h o p o n P e r s o n a l i z e d M e d i c i n e , N o v e m b e r 2 0 0 7

T H E A R T — A N D S C I E N C E — O F T H E E L E V A T O R P I T C H

For the third year in a row, Keck Fellows will

exchange microscopes for serving spoons as they

prepare and serve lunch to young patients and their

families at the Ronald McDonald House-Houston on

February 8, 2008. Volunteering there gives Keck

Fellows a chance to put a human face on scientific

research.

Page 3 F A L L / W I N T E R 2 0 0 7

medicine.” – Kathy Matthews, Rice University “Personalized medicine really means science-based medicine across many different research disciplines, clinical depart-ments, and healthcare areas ….We must include ALL our research strengths from genet-ics, genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, regenerative medicine, imaging, cell and gene therapy, microbiomics to robotics, information technol-ogy, nanotechnology, bioinfor-matics …” – Tony Elam, Baylor College of Medicine

4. Credible – you have what it takes to tackle the problem 5. Conceptual – fairly high level statements about what you’re doing 6. Concrete – your work is more than an idea 7. Energy – show some excitement about your life’s work! Want to know more? Search “elevator pitch” online for many helpful tools and resources.

Page 4 W H A T T H E K E C K

Interinstitutional collaboration is a key component of all GCC/Keck Center programs. Each year, member institutions of the GCC co-locate at two national recruiting events: the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) and the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS). Facilitated by the Keck Center office, co-location allows all institutional recruiters to focus on finding the best programs in the Gulf Coast area for highly qualified minority candidates and better showcases the breadth and depth of training and research opportunities available in the area.

Faculty, trainees and staff from the GCC/Keck Center (Susan Cates, Rice University, left, and Lisa Blinn, GCC, standing right) support the recruiting efforts of all six institutions by meeting with students to discuss their educational goals, explaining available fellowship options and providing information about the Houston-Galveston area.

Nanobiology * application deadline January 8, 2008

* predoctoral and postdoctoral slots available

* U.S. citizens/permanent residents; foreign nationals

NLM—Biomedical Informatics * application deadline January 18, 2008

* predoctoral and postdoctoral slots available

* U.S. citizens and permanent residents only

Pharmacoinformatics * application deadline January 28, 2008

* predoctoral and postdoctoral slots available

* U.S. citizens/permanent residents; foreign nationals

Important: Please check each training program for specific information about deadlines and requirements on www.gulfcoastconsortia.org

K E C K C E N T E R C A L L S F O R A P P L I C A T I O N S

1. If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

a. Albert Einstein b. Ted Wensel c. Charles Darwin 2. My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to.

Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, "So? Did you learn anything today?" But not my mother. She would say, "Did you ask a good question to-day?" That difference - asking good questions - made me become a scientist.

a. Jerry Seinfeld b. Max Gluckman c. Isidor Isaac Rabi

W H O S A I D I T ? ( a n s w e r s o n p a g e 6 )

3. My enjoyment is just doing the experiments. Of course one enjoys the results, but if you don't enjoy the doing of it you won't succeed in science.

a. Monte Pettitt b. Oliver Smithies c. Neal Lane 4. Science advances frequently by the encounter between two domains, two different domains. a. Albert Fert b. James Watson c. Elias Zerhouni Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to cooperate. - Margaret Mead (1901-1978), cultural anthropologist

Page 5 F A L L / W I N T E R 2 0 0 6

Top left, left to right: former NLM trainee

Graham Randall (BCM), Nanobiology pre-

doc Analette Lopez (UH), SCBMB trainee

Amadeo Biter (BCM), SCBMB trainee Char

Hu (BCM), and former NLM trainee Mat-

thew Ward (BCM). Top right: Tim Palzkill

(BCM), left, listens to NLM predoc Jesse

Turner (RU). At left: Nanobiology predoc

Jennifer Jamison (RU) explains her poster

to Wayne Bolen (UTMB). At right: from left

Mark White (UTMB), Cathy Higgins (GCC),

& Pharmacoinformatics postdoc Hong

Yang (UTMB).

Above left: NLM postdoc JJ Heyd (UTHSC-H,

back to camera) presents Anup Parikh’s (BCM,

in yellow shirt) poster to judges: from left Kevin

MacKenzie (RU), Bob Fox (UTMB) and Mary

Estes (BCM). Above right: Nanobiology predoc

Nolan Harris (RU) explains his poster to plenary

speaker Nipam Patel (UC Berkeley). At left:

conference co-chairs Ted Wensel (BCM, left)

and Stan Watowich (UTMB). At right: CSBB

predoc Troy Hammerstrom (UTHSC-H) and NLM

predoc Nasos Dousis (RU).

Page 6 W H A T T H E K E C K

The Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC) is an innovative research and education collaboration formed to provide a formal and lasting mechanism for advancing biological sciences in the 21st century. It is comprised of six prominent institutions: Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, University of Houston, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. GCC is one of the largest inter-institutional co-operatives in the world with a focus on building strong research collaborations that bring together complementary and disparate faculty expertise as well as building multidisciplinary training opportunities for students in the computational, biological, mathematical, physical and chemical sciences.

D O N ’ T M I S S T H E S E K E C K S E M I N A R S P E A K E R S F O R S P R I N G 2 0 0 8 !

Jan. 11: C.S. Raman, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, UTHSC-H Jan. 18: Susan Amara, Thomas Detre Professor and Chair, Department of Neuroscience, University of Pittsburg School of Medicine Jan. 25: Poster winners from the 2007 Keck Annual Research Conference Part 1 Feb. 1: Jennifer West, Isabel C. Cameron Professor of Bioengineering, Rice University Feb. 15: Poster winners from the 2007 Keck Annual Research Conference Part 2 Feb. 22: Monte Pettitt, Cullen Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, University of Houston Feb. 29: Robert Powers, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, University of Nebraska, Lincoln March 14: TBA March 28: TBA April 4: TBA April 11: Jin Wang, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Physics, State University of New York, Stoney Brook April 18: Pamela Silver, Professor of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School

Keck Seminars are held most Fridays of the academic year, 4:00 p.m., Rice University, Keck Hall, Room 102.

S A V E T H E D A T E !

Sealy Structural Biology Symposium,

May 16-17, 2008, Galveston, TX

National Library of Medicine National Meeting,

June 17-18, 2008, Bethesda, MD.

Keck Annual Research Conference, October 2-3, 2008, Houston, TX

Keck Center Training Programs

Biomedical Discovery from Large Scale Datasets

Computational Biology and

Biomedical Informatics

Computational and Structural Biology in Biodefense

Houston Area Molecular

Biophysics Program

Nanobiology

Pharmacoinformatics

Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience

W. M. Keck Virus Imaging

Gulf Coast Research Consortia

GCC for Bioinformatics and GCC Center for Cancer Research

John S. Dunn GCC

for Chemical Genomics

John S. Dunn, Sr. GCC for Magnetic Resonance

GCC for Membrane Biology

GCC for Protein Crystallography

GCC for Theoretical and

Computational Neuroscience

Answers from Quiz, page 4: 1. a. Albert Einstein (1874-1955), Nobel Prize in Physics, 1922 2. c. Isidor Isaac Rabi (1898-1988), Nobel Prize in Physics, 1944 3. b. Oliver Smithies (1925- ), Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2007 4 a. Albert Fert (1938- ), Nobel Prize in Physics, 2007

c/o Rice University 6100 Main Street, MS-141 Houston, TX 77005 Karen Ethun, GCC Executive Director

Lisa Blinn, Administrative Director

Melissa Glueck, Admin. Program Director

Cathy Higgins, PhD, GCRC Program Director

Deborah Miller, GCC Coordinator

www.gulfcoastconsortia.org

w h e r e s c i e n c e a n d t h e f u t u r e i n t e r s e c t

G U L F C O A S T C O N S O R T I A / K E C K C E N T E R

I N T E R D I S C I P L I N A R Y

B I O S C I E N C E R E S E A R C H + T R A I N I N G