Dear IHSI community,
I am pleased to write this note to you all as director of IHSI. Our IHSI team has been involved in many efforts to drive and equitably grow the impact of Illinois health research and innovation during my time as interim director, and I am thrilled to keep this momentum going into the future.
This fall, we’ve been celebrating 10 years of health, recognizing the establishment of IHSI as an initiative in 2014. This has been the perfect opportunity to reflect on our accomplishments over the past 10 years, hone in on our institute’s unique strengths, and identify ways to best put these to work for our university and with our partners. While we work to finalize and share these strategic directions, we’re also focused on carrying out various efforts that are foundational to IHSI’s continued impact and success.
In August, IHSI announced our up to $33 million award from ARPA-H for an end-to-end solution that will drastically improve surgical outcomes for cancer tumor removal. We have already started working very closely with ARPA-H, our partners at Mayo Clinic, and our team of 70+ experts(!) from Illinois (including individuals from IHSI, The Grainger College of Engineering, and NCSA), Mayo Clinic, Carle Health, and Eleuthra Photonics toward our MarginDx project. I look forward to sharing my excitement for the project during a Foundation Weekend event on Nov. 15, as well as with the larger community (you can check out some of this coverage from the News-Gazette and NPR).
This award, along with Illinois’ “spoke” involvement with the ARPA-H Investor Catalyst and Customer Experience Hubs, is helping IHSI better understand and anticipate partnership and funding opportunities with ARPA-H. We hope you will continue to reach out and collaborate with IHSI and others on these interdisciplinary, multi-team projects.
We’re also actively working to deepen and diversify our relationships with Illinois researchers and our academic, community, industry, and clinical partners. We are laying the groundwork for an IHSI Affiliate program that offers many mutually beneficial opportunities, as well as adjusting some of our programs, like Community-Academic Scholars and the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship and Health Equity Research Experience with Mayo Clinic, to increase research connections and broaden participation. Many of those working with our BERD and REDCap teams continue to seek assistance beyond their initial requests, and make use of the expertise in these research resources in a variety of research and data-collection projects. Finally, our Emerging Research Leaders Academy is in full swing with its second cohort of outstanding mid-career faculty from across campus who have set their sights on building research programs that extend beyond their own research lab and into larger interdisciplinary and collaborative center- and multi-institution or partner-level efforts.
We have much to be proud of and much to look forward to in the coming months and years. Thank you for being an important part of carrying out our mission to improve personal, public, and planetary health.
Stephen Boppart, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, IHSI