About BHSI Membership

A Brief History: The UGA Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute was established in 2001 to facilitate and promote interdisciplinary research and instructional efforts at UGA in the fields of biomedical and health sciences. Harry A. Dailey was appointed its first director in September 2001, after serving as a member of the executive planning committee that recommended creating the institute. The BHSI moved into its current home, the Paul D. Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences, in March 2006.

Membership: Applying to be a member is easy! Membership is open to any faculty member with research relevant to any area in the biomedical and health sciences. Just fill out an application online or send one via Campus Mail. Membership has its benefits. As a BHSI member, you become part of larger on campus network focused on building interdiscilinary research connections across campus and beyond. (Learn about membership levels here). At present, there over 170 UGA faculty members in the BHSI represent 9 school and colleges and at least 38 departments.

Along with the application, we have requested you post a Curriculum Vitae on the Community of Science (COS) Website. Creating a COS site is easy to do and useful, since government funding agencies plan to utilize a uniform, web-based CV library for grant applications. These COS CVs, along with the BHSI Website, will make information readily available for anyone developing future interdisciplinary grant applications (e.g. - training grants and program project grants, etc.). The Office of Sponsored Programs has graciously agreed to help by offering COS workshops to assist in creating your site. Let us know if you would like to participate.

Divisional Chairs: The Institute's four divisional chairs are: Fred Quinn, Division of Infectious Disease and Immunity; Kojo Mensa-Wilmot, Division of Molecular Medicine; Gaylen Edwards, Division of Neuroscience; and Robert Galen, Division of Public Health.

Program Development: A key goal is to develop graduate programs for all divisions. A Master of Public Health (MPH) program was developed by the BHSI Division of Public Health and was approved by Board of Regents for fall semester 2004. With the formation of the College of Public Health (CPH) in January 2005, the MPH program migrated into the CPH. A proposal for an Interdiscplinary Ph.D. Program in Neuroscience was approved by the Board of Regents in July 2005 and is now in its second year. Faculty are also actively working on a proposal for a interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Integrated Biomedical Science. Please feel free to contact the division chairs to learn more.

The BHSI Website: The Website (www.biomed.uga.edu) continues to be a work in progress and as the BHSI grows, the Website continues to grow as well. It is the premier source of information about BHSI, including its partnerships and initiatives, news and publications, and services provided by BHSI faculty and staff. In addition to providing information about the BHSI programs and services, the Website aims to provide a hub for all this biomedical and health sciences related at UGA, so links to additional UGA institutes, centers, departmental colleges and programs focused in these areas can also be found.

Partnerships at UGA: We are actively involved in a number of partnerships across campus. These included the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts (BHSI-CHA Annual Bioethics Seminar), Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO Biomedical Apprentices and CURO Biomedical Summer Fellows), Regenerative Bioscience Center (HEST Workshop and RBC Symposia) and Ecology of Infectious Disease Research Initiative (EID Lecture Series). One of the goals of the Institute is to foster the development of new programs and centers.

External Partnerships: Since 2000-01, we have partnered with Atlanta Chapter of the ARCS Foundation, Inc. to provide scholarships for doctoral students involved in biomedical and health science Research research. Most recently, the Institute has established a biomedical seed grant program in colloaboration with then Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech/UGA Biomedical Research Program) aimed at building interdisciplinary research collaborations between the two institutions.