Mayo Clinic, U of Illinois align for R&D

Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have entered into a strategic alliance designed to promote various collaborative research projects and develop new technologies.

The Mayo Clinic - Illinois strategic alliance provides a framework for cooperation in individualized medicine by integrating efforts in three areas:
  • Basic, translational and clinical research;
  • Bioengineering, especially for point-of-care diagnostics; and
  • Development of tools and methods in computational biology and medicine.

Initial areas of scientific focus for the alliance will include projects in genomics, the microbiome, bioinformatics and other computational science including the use of petascale computing, imaging, nanotechnology and tissue engineering, according to Mayo. Planning is underway for bilateral educational programs in bioengineering, computational medicine nanotechnology, genomics innovation and entrepreneurism.

The alliance also intends to eventually co-sponsor a variety of symposia and seminars, the first of which was held earlier this spring. A steering committee is currently being formed to oversee the alliance. All projects will require joint collaboration, the facility added.

The collaboration expects to be sustained by funding from federal grants and philanthropy and from a variety of entrepreneurial projects, Mayo Clinic stated.

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