HMS Strategic Planning |
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MARCH 25, 2008Message from the Dean
Dear Colleagues, We are now at a point where many of our Advisory Groups are coming close to wrapping up their work. Over the next few weeks, they will be bringing their findings and recommendations forward for consideration by the strategic planning Steering Committee and, ultimately, School and University leadership. I expect to share these with you as they become available. Today, I am happy to be able to offer you a preview of the work of the Biomedical Research Advisory Group (BRAG). This team, co-led by Kricket Seidman and Bruce Spiegelman, divided into two subgroups with the aim of discussing
The "critical areas of research" subgroup elected to consider eight main areas for potential direction of University, School and possibly Hospital funds :
Human genetics was already the subject of an extensive discussion over the last year by a committee constituted by my predecessor, Joe Martin, and bioengineering is currently the focus of a committee jointly convened by myself and Dean Venkatesh Narayanamurti that is co-chaired by Pamela Silver (HMS) and Joanna Aizenberg from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). For the other six topics, the subgroup identified "team leads" and requested that they convene a group to provide an analysis of this area of research at HMS. The reports were limited to five pages with the following format: a definition of the area under discussion, to avoid possible confusion; a summary of the current state of the field at HMS, including strengths and weaknesses; a discussion of challenges and opportunities; and an evaluation of organizational models that might be used to structure future investments. The human genetics and immunology/inflammation reports have now been discussed by the Steering Committee, and I am happy to be able to distribute them for wider discussion. I find these two reports particularly interesting as they each describe the activities of self-organized groups that draw faculty from many different institutions within the HMS community. Both of these groups view the distributed nature of their activities as a strength, not a weakness, but they both acknowledge that the lack of a central "home" has contributed to the existence of some serious challenges. Their proposals for overcoming these challenges are different in detail but similar in spirit; one common factor is that both communities feel that for their efforts to be fully supported, HMS needs to find a way to coordinate faculty recruitments across multiple institutions, and leverage its potential resource commitments to joint concerns, such as education and the development of technological platforms. These are very much the kinds of changes that I am hoping to promote as Dean, and so I look forward to further discussion of these issues with many of you. I want to thank Kricket Seidman and Bruce Spiegelman for their efforts in guiding the BRAG team, and also David Altshuler and Don Coen for co-chairing the "critical areas of research" subteam. Kricket and David were also deeply involved in the committee that produced the human genetics report, while Diane Mathis led the team focused on immunology/inflammation; the full list of team members is provided at the end of each document. I am extremely grateful to all the members of the various teams for all their hard work. Indeed, I am thrilled by the progress we have made in general. While all these areas will need a longer period of discussion before any decision can be reached — and in some cases the decision will be to set up a new committee to analyze the question further — I feel that together we are taking very substantial steps towards a plan to coordinate, expand, and intensify our efforts in both research and education. I hope you find these two early reports interesting reading. I
expect to be able to update this site much more frequently with
advisory committee submissions in the next few weeks. Please check
back often, and please feel free to add your comments.
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