Stories indexed with the term ‘UM Medical School’

$17.5M Renovation Planned at UM’s NCRC

A major renovation at the University of Michigan’s North Campus Research Complex – costing an estimated $17.5 million – was approved by regents at their Nov. 15, 2012 meeting. The project will cover about 68,000-square-feet in the east wing of Building 20, which was originally constructed in 1956. The site is within the former Pfizer campus, purchased by UM in 2009. Tim Slottow, the university’s chief financial officer, told regents that this work had been anticipated when the university acquired the complex.

As described in a staff memo, the renovation will upgrade the area to be used for interdisciplinary biomedical research. The project will be funded with UM Medical School resources and designed by SmithGroupJJR. It’s estimated that about 40 … [Full Story]

Two UM Medical School Depts. Created

The creation of two new departments at the University of Michigan Medical School – for cardiac surgery, and computational medicine and bioinformatics (CMB) – was approved by the UM board of regents at their Sept. 15, 2011 meeting.

The CMB department will be established as of Jan. 2, 2012. It has existed as a center since 2005, with funding from the National Institutes of Health for research and a graduate training program. Becoming a department will help CBM recruit faculty and trainees, according to a staff memo.

Cardiac surgery is currently a section within the department of surgery. The section has grown to a size in terms of faculty, financial resources, and academic productivity that it warrants becoming a separate administrative unit, according to … [Full Story]

UM Makes Plans for Pfizer Research Campus

Jim Bell, center, chief administrative officer for the UM Medical School, chats with Marvin Parnes, right, associate vice president for research and executive director of research administration, and John Ballew, executive vice president for medical affairs.

Jim Bell, center, chief administrative officer for the UM Medical School, chats with Marvin Parnes, right, associate vice president for research and executive director of research administration, and John Ballew, director of UM Health System facilities planning. They were awaiting the start of Tuesday's forum on possible uses for the Pfizer research campus.

Jim Woolliscroft was Harlan Hatcher’s personal physician, and near the end of the former University of Michigan president’s life, Woolliscroft made house calls to check in on him. That gave them time to talk. And one of the things they talked about was UM’s purchase of the property that became North Campus.

Hatcher told Woolliscroft that when UM leaders decided to buy the 800 acres of farmland north of Ann Arbor, they didn’t know exactly how they’d use it – but they knew it would transform the university.

Woolliscroft, dean of the UM Medical School, told that anecdote Tuesday afternoon to the 100 or so people gathered at a forum on the future of the Pfizer research campus, which UM is in the process of acquiring. This purchase isn’t quite as bold as the one made in the early 1950s, Woolliscroft said, but its potential to transform in unimaginable ways is great: “That opportunity is phenomenal.”

The forum was one of three held this year for faculty to talk about how the university will use the former Pfizer facility. Tuesday’s hour-long session focused on process, with administrators outlining just how they’ll go about deciding what academic research or other activities are located at the site. [Full Story]