Rice University/Texas Medical Center Collaborative Programs and Centers

EDUCATION

Interinstitutional Program in Biostatistics, Statistical Genetics, and Bioinformatics (Ph.D.)

The Department of Statistics at Rice and the Department of Biostatistics at University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have joined together to offer an interinstitutional educational program leading to Ph.D. statisticians trained in the area of biostatistics, statistical genetics and/or bioinformatics.

The Medical Scientist Training Program(M.D./Ph.D.)

As part of the Medical Scientist Training Program, a small, but highly dedicated group of students undertakes Ph.D. studies from Rice at the same time that they are earning M.D. degrees from Baylor College of Medicine.

The Medical Scholars Program

Each year, through the Medical Scholars Program (MSP), up to 15 freshman students are admitted jointly to Rice and Baylor College of Medicine.

M.D./M.B.A. Program

The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management and Baylor College of Medicine offer a combined M.B.A./M.D. to answer the growing need for professional leaders in today’s healthcare institutions.

BioE Med Into Grad Program (HHMI)

The Department of Bioengineering at Rice and UT M.D. Anderson jointly coordinate an innovative training program designed to provide clinical exposure and training for a select group of bioengineering doctoral students. The Ph.D. training program in “Translational Bioengineering for Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics” integrates courses in cancer biology, clinical medicine, bioengineering and translational research, unique internships in clinical cancer care and translational research, and jointly mentored inter-disciplinary Ph.D. projects.

Undergraduate Clinical Internship Program (HHMI)

Selected undergraduate bioengineering students from Rice and other universities participate in an intensive 10-week summer internship at UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. The program is designed to provide bioengineering undergraduates with first-hand experience in clinical medicine and interdisciplinary research.

Beyond Traditional Borders Initiative (HHMI)

The Beyond Traditional Borders Initiative includes representation from Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center, University of Texas School of Public Health and UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, and partner institutions abroad reaching from Mexico to Nigeria. The mission of the Beyond Traditional Borders Initiative is to foster the creation of globally appropriate health technologies that address the pressing health needs of the developing world by engaging students through a novel multi-disciplinary educational program.

Honors Premedical Program

Now entering its second decade, the Baylor College of Medicine/Rice University Honors Premedical Program (HPP) conducts a six-week summer academic enrichment program for minority students pursuing a career in medicine.

Gulf Coast Consortia for Interdisciplinary Bioscience Research and Training

The Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC) brings together the strengths of its six member institutions to build interdisciplinary collaborative research teams and training programs in the biological sciences at their intersection with the computational, chemical, mathematical, and physical sciences. Comprised of six institutions, Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, University of Houston, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, the GCC provides a cutting edge collaborative training environment and research infrastructure, one beyond the capability of any single institution. The mission of the GCC is to train the next generation of bioscientists and to enable scientists to ask and answer questions that cross scientific disciplines, to address the challenging biological issues of our time and, ultimately, to apply the resulting expertise and knowledge to the treatment and prevention of disease.

The Keck Center for Interdisciplinary Bioscience Training, training arm of the GCC, currently supports over 70 trainees through competitive grants from NIH and the W. M. Keck Foundation. Within the Keck Center, the emphasis is on continuing its 17-year successful tradition of fostering interdisciplinary and multi-institutional training at predoctoral and postdoctoral levels in computational and structural biology, molecular biophysics, nanobiology, pharmacoinformatics, virus imaging, medical informatics, and biodefense.

The GCC Research Consortia serve to catalyze interactions and provide a supportive environment for collaborative research programs that require expertise beyond that available in any one institution. Currently, the GCC supports over 400 faculty engaged with consortia in the following areas: Chemical Genomics, Membrane Biology, Protein Crystallography, Magnetic Resonance, Bioinformatics, and Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience. The Gulf Coast Center for Computational Cancer Research is a focused program sponsored by a consortium.

The Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy

Ever-increasing abilities of medicine to prolong and enhance the quality of life raise fundamental ethical and moral issues. To help practitioners and researchers in biomedicine, the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy was created in 1982 to develop teaching and research programs that address ethical, legal, and public policy issues relating to health care and the biomedical sciences. The center offers, through Rice, a Ph.D. in philosophy and bioethics, with studies strongly concentrated on medical philosophy and bioethical theory. As part of the curriculum, students participate in the center’s clinical teaching activities and research projects and observe actual clinical discussions throughout the Texas Medical Center.

The Center for Neuroscience

Neuroscience, the study of the nervous system, has been called “the last great frontier of science.” To better explore this frontier, Rice’s School of Social Sciences—noted for its strength in cognitive psychology—has established the Center for Neuroscience in conjunction with Baylor College of Medicine. The new program, which began in fall 1999, comprises an undergraduate and graduate curriculum that engages faculty from the partnering Texas Medical Center institutions and from four of Rice’s academic divisions: social sciences, natural sciences, engineering, and humanities.

NSBRI: Space Biomedical and Life Sciences Curriculum

A collaborative partnership between Rice University and University of Texas Medical Branch is dedicated to communicating the significance of space life sciences and microgravity biotechnology to local and national audiences, while disseminating the biomedical knowledge gained through research program to the classroom and community.