VOLUME 7, FEBRUARY 2013
THE
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
The Helix annual newsletter describes the activities of the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences from August 1, 2012 through February 28, 2013
Dr. Pappachan E. Kolattukudy
LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR Thanks to the foresight of Vice President M.J. Soileau, Provost Gary Whitehouse and President Hitt, who made the commitment to support the plan I proposed to them seven years ago to build a biomedical research and education enterprise, such an enterprise is now flourishing at UCF. It is a great pleasure to report that the Burnett School is making great progress in meeting our goals on all fronts, thanks to the dedication and exceptional hard work of our faculty, staff and research personnel. Our physical facilities expanded to provide space for the growing programs. The 198,000 sq. ft. Burnett School of Biomedical Science building at Lake Nona became ready for occupancy last spring and currently 13 research teams are working in the building. This building has a variety of IN THIS ISSUE: • New Faculty • Faculty Accomplishments • Student Achievements • Faculty News • Other News
sophisticated state-of-the-art shared core instrumentation facilities that should enhance our ability to conduct research at the cutting edge. The 25,000 sq. ft. transgenic animal facility has become functional and started serving the research needs of our programs. We completed the refurbishing of the Biomolecular Science annex in the Research Park. A laboratory vacated by Cardiopulmonary Sciences in HPA2 is being converted into a state-of-the-art biotechnology teaching laboratory with modern instrumentation. Shuttle service and video hookups started to function to help meet the challenges posed by the 25-mile separation of the Burnett building from the main campus although many challenges still remain.
rently we have 115 graduate students, 70 in Ph.D. and 45 in the M.S. programs. More than 100 undergraduate students are conducting laboratory research. Five of our undergraduates are listed as co-authors on journal articles and 22 contributed to 21 different abstracts/presentations. Thanks to the efforts of our advising staff who pay special attention to students with special needs, BSBS has one of the lowest percentage of students on probation.
Of the 25 presentations given at the Showcase of Undergraduate Research (SURE), our students received two first place, a second place and two honorable mentions in the Life Sciences category. Of the 1,665 students in the Burnett Honors Our academic programs are constantly under- College, 222 of them are Molecular Biology and going renewal to provide our students training Microbiology majors. Of the 270 active Honors in the emerging technologies in biomedical sci- in the Major students, 13 are in Burnett School. ence to prepare them for tomorrow’s employ- We have 61 active LEAD Scholars. Two Molecular ment market. New courses in biotechnological Biology and Microbiology majors won Honors areas such as stem cell biology, tissue engineer- in the Major and three students won the Order ing, bioimaging and biotechnology laboratory of Pegasus, the university’s most prestigious award. methods are being offered. The newly developed biotechnology B.S. and M.S. programs are We had six students from abroad—Holland, Spain, already beginning to generate a workforce for South Africa, China and Iraq—sent here to receive the emerging biotechnology industry. The new training by working in our research laboratories. Our M.S./M.B.A. and Ph.D./M.B.A. programs be- faculty collaborate with researchers at the national leving offered in collaboration with the College of el at the University of California, University of MiBusiness Administration are to provide the man- ami, Ohio State University, University of Florida, etc., agerial workforce for the biotechnology industry. and internationally in Switzerland, Canada, Austria, Brazil, China, France, India, Italy, Japan, Jordan, etc. Our academic programs are growing in quality and size. Last year more than 14,000 students were The faculty of the Burnett School are supported enrolled in our courses and this fall our enrollment by more than $12.6 million per year from nationincreased more than 11 percent.We currently have ally competitive sources such as the National In2,523 majors in our undergraduate degree pro- stitutes of Health (NIH) and Department of Degrams, more than 12 percent increase over the last fense. A shared instrumentation grant was awarded year. Our graduate programs also are growing; cur- to set up a sophisticated confocal imaging system.