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Stellar Research Institute Team Changing the World of Medicine B Y
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The collaboration has begun. Over the past two years, top-notch researchers, scientists and physicians from around the nation have gathered at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute. With expertise in a wide range of specialties — including bioinformatics, molecular imaging, diabetes, liver disease, medical genomics, proteomics and more — these recent recruits join a stellar cast of team members to shape the future of medical care. Methodist’s new director of the diabetes and metabolism research program, Dr. Willa Hsueh, (pronounced Shoy) has just arrived in Houston and is already collaborating with Dr. Stephen Wong and Dr. King Li on how bioinformatics and imaging might aid her research on diabetes. “The resources and the interdisciplinary spirit, combined with the establishment of crucial core facilities, brought me here,” Hsueh says. “I now realize this move has allowed my research to expand exponentially.”
“The spirit of the Research Institute is to promote translational research and allow us to study our discoveries in humans.”
From Harvard and the National Institutes of Health on the East Coast and from UCLA and the University of California, San Francisco on the West Coast, medical brain power is converging in Houston to take part in a collaborative mission to seek better treatments and cures for patients around the globe. Dr. Michael W. Lieberman, The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (TMHRI) founding director, calls it “building a bridge from the laboratory to the bedside.” 䡲 䡲 䡲 䡲 䡲 The most recent TMHRI recruits include Wong and Li, who came aboard within the last two years, and Hsueh, who moved here in February. Also joining the Research Institute team in early 2008 are Dr. John Baxter and Dr. R. Mark Ghobrial, both from California. All cite Methodist’s commitment, vision and resources as driving factors that motivated their moves in the midst of remarkably successful careers elsewhere. But the biggest incentives attracting them to Houston are the promises of collaboration and the freedom to explore their disciplines without boundaries. “There is huge potential here, mainly because of the quality of the people, the organization and the location within the Texas Medical Center,” says Li, former chief of the Radiology and Imaging Sciences Program at the
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Dr. Willa Hsueh
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