• Cummings School Research Symposium
• Academic Symposium—Advances in Child Development
• Science at Tufts for the 21st Century

Cummings School Research Symposium

In September 2011 the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University held a research symposium to update President Anthony Monaco on the school’s varied research. Dean Deborah Kochevar and Associate Dean for Research Sawkat Anwer began the symposium with an overview of research at the Cummings School. President Monaco spoke briefly about his own research, noting the importance of cross-species investigation. The range of research program descriptions included infectious diseases/global health; neuroscience/reproductive biology; digestive diseases; regenerative medicine/respiratory diseases; emergency medicine/critical care; orthopedics; comparative oncology; cardiology diseases/nutrition; and wildlife/conservation medicine.

For more information on Cummings School research, please go to http://www.tufts.edu/vet.

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Academic Symposium—Advances in Child Development

In October 2011 an academic symposium was held at the Arthur M. Sackler Center for Medical Education on the Tufts Boston campus. Peggy Newell, provost and senior vice president ad interim, welcomed attendees and introduced the keynote speaker, Sir Michael Rutter, one of the world’s foremost experts on child psychiatry. Rutter presented Key Paradigm Shifts in Developmental Sciences. Other speakers included Maryanne Wolf (The Evolving Reading Brain in a Digital Culture), Anthony Monaco (Genetics of Neurodevelopmental Disorders), Christina Economos (Tackling a Crisis: A Systems Approach to Obesity Prevention), Diana Bianchi (Treatment of Developmental Disorders Using a Prenatal Gene Expression Approach), Huw Thomas (Early Childhood Caries: The Role of Nutrition), Lisa Freeman (Child Development: Linking Human and Animal Health), and Chris Rogers (Kindergarten Engineering: Motivating Creativity and Innovation in the Classroom).

For more information and a video of the symposium, please go to http://president.tufts.edu/inauguration2011/academic-symposium.

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Science at Tufts for the 21st Century

A faculty-organized, university-wide interdisciplinary science conference was held on the Tufts Boston campus in January 2012. The conference advanced its goal of identifying ways to foster innovative research programs at Tufts. Linc Sonenshein provided an overview of the day’s sessions, which included Emerging Interdisciplinary Teams at Tufts (presented by Jonathan Garlick) and Thoughts on Interdisciplinary Science at Tufts (presented by Anthony Monaco).

Current and Future Federal Research Trends and Initiatives in Interdisciplinary Research was presented by Michael Ledford of Lewis-Burke Associates. Tufts has contracted with Lewis-Burke to assist the university in making the most of federal research funding. For information on the firm and its services, please see the Lewis-Burke Associates website. Kirby Johnson (kirby.johnson@tufts.edu or (617) 636-9121) is the Tufts contact for this effort.

In the Tools for Collaboration and Research session, Henry Wortis mentioned the growing number of pilot or seed grants available through Tufts Internal Funding Opportunities, including Tufts Collaborates!, Tufts Innovates!, and the newest offering, Technology Access Grants (TAGs). Matthew Cox and Kyle Pope of University Information Technology described the new Tufts Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration site that is located on Trunk, a new online environment designed to facilitate teaching, learning, and assessment at Tufts. Trunk enables the sharing of knowledge and new models of collaboration within and across disciplines, at Tufts and beyond. Cox and Pope also described the video conferencing tools Cisco TelePresence Movi and Adobe Connect.

Each session provided issues for discussion during the Q&A periods. The plenary discussion at the end provided time for attendees to suggest changes in instrumentation, core facilities, infrastructure, and support services that could have significant impact on research at Tufts.

For a video of the conference, please go to the Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration website via https://trunk.tufts.edu.

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