Caroline Canarios of the Center for Population Studies talks with Chancellor Jeffrey Vitter (left) and Josh Gladden, UM vice chancellor for research, about the ‘Right! from the Start’ breastfeeding program, which includes investigators from the Oxford and Medical Center campuses. UMMC Public Affairs photo
JACKSON, Miss. – Members of the Jackson and Oxford research communities gathered April 4 for the fourth annual UM/UMMC Research Day in the Norman C. Nelson Student Union at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
Research Day, held in alternating years at University of Mississippi’s Oxford and Medical Center campuses, is an opportunity for members of the university community to learn more about the scientific and scholarly research being conducted on both campuses. More than 150 attendees learned about the work of more than 80 faculty, administrators and trainees, ranging from artificial neural networks to health in Zambia.
“Research is the glue that holds our university’s missions together,” said Dr. Richard Summers, UMMC associate vice chancellor for research. Without the new knowledge generated by research, advances in education, health care and service would stall.
“The future is in our hands,” Summers said.
“I cannot overstate my confidence that we, as an institution, will continue to grow,” Chancellor Jeffrey Vitter said.
The day’s presentations took the form of three-minute lectures, poster sessions and keynote addresses. Some presenters discussed their resources and results, inviting new partners to join in their work.
“How can we more actively treat patients, as opposed to seeing them in a doctor’s office every three to six months?” asked Kourtland Adams, nurse manager for the UMMC Center of Telehealth. His lecture discussed the potential of remote patient monitoring for managing chronic health conditions.
After providing patients in Sunflower County with digital monitors for daily check-ins, Telehealth’s diabetes project observed a decreased HbA1c after three months, he said.
Others arrived at Research Day with explicit requests for help.
“I came here looking for a medical physicist, and my presentation happens to follow one,” said Dwight Waddell, UM associate professor of electrical engineering.
Jeremiah Blough (left), a graduate student in the School of Applied Sciences, discusses his research with Jeremiah Reese, a first-year medical student, during a poster session. UMMC Public Affairs photo
Waddell, director of the new undergraduate biomedical engineering program, shared his “first-world” problem: lots of qualified students, but not enough research opportunities for them in Oxford alone. What better place to find potential mentors than the Medical Center, he said.
This year’s Research Day also included a forum on the Flagship Constellations, an initiative formalized in November 2017 to cluster research teams around broad challenges. Co-leaders from the Big Data, Brain Wellness, Community Wellbeing and Disaster Resilience constellations updated attendees on plans for cross-disciplinary work.
Nowadays, research requires this kind of collaborative approach. The image of a solo scientist bent over a lab bench is faded and outdated.
“One thing we have learned about research is that no man or woman is an island,” Summers said. “We need to leverage our strengths to make progress.”
“There’s no more low-hanging fruit in research,” said Josh Gladden, UM vice chancellor for research and sponsored programs. “We are now looking at complex, multidimensional problems that require a multidisciplinary approach.”
Gladden illustrated the importance of forums such as Research Day with a story about a meeting between UMMC clinicians and Ole Miss acoustic researchers that occurred a few years ago. He saw an engineer and a neurosurgeon “huddled at a table drawing on a napkin,” he said, sketching out an idea for a device.
That kind of informal brainstorming can be the start of great ideas and partnerships, he said. With that, he encouraged Research Day attendees to find their own tables.
“We have plenty of napkins,” he said.