ABOUT THE GULF COAST CONSORTIA

HISTORY
ORGANIZATION
TRAINING
RESEACH

For more information about 
Keck Center for Interdisciplinary Bioscience Training Programs
and
GCC Research Consortia,
please go to GCC Home

The Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC) brings together the strengths of its six member institutions to build interdisciplinary collaborative research teams and training programs in the biological sciences at their intersection with the computational, chemical, mathematical, and physical sciences. Comprised of six prominent and geographically proximate Gulf Coast institutions, Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, University of Houston, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, the GCC’s goal is to provide a cutting edge collaborative training environment and research infrastructure, one beyond the capability of any single institution. The GCC’s mission is to train the next generation of bioscientists and to enable scientists to ask and answer questions that cross scientific disciplines to address the challenging biological issues of our time and, ultimately, to apply the resulting expertise and knowledge to the treatment and prevention of disease.

HISTORY

Created in 2001 through a Memorandum of Agreement signed by the president of each member institution, and renewed in 2004 and 2007 for an additional three years, the GCC represents an unprecedented degree of inter-institutional cooperation to facilitate training programs and research teams contributing in important new or growing disciplines, including emerging interdisciplinary fields, such as chemical genomics and nanobiology. GCC member institution leaders recognize that the scale and complexity of today’s biomedical research problems increasingly require scientists to move beyond traditional single investigator or single discipline projects. They have publicly articulated their support for the GCC as a model for collaboration. They acknowledge the strategic benefits in merging their institutions’ unique and highly complementary strengths and capabilities, recognize the challenges of melding different institutional cultures and missions, and value the GCC’s effectiveness as a mechanism for managing inter-institutional interactions. 

ORGANIZATION

The GCC is comprised of a training arm, the Keck Center for Interdisciplinary Bioscience Training, and a research arm, with multiple communities focused on specific areas of interest to the GCC’s participating faculty. The Keck Center currently supports seven predoctoral and post-doctoral training programs and a summer undergraduate research program. There are six research consortia and a center, with additional ideas in development. The GCC Oversight Committee, the GCC’s governing body, is comprised of member institution representatives appointed by each institution president, the Keck Executive Committee chair, the GCC Research Consortia Committee chair, the GCC Oversight Committee chair emeritus, the  Keck Center Executive Director and the GCC Reserach Consortia Coordinator. In addition to providing strategic direction, governance and operational guidance for the GCC, this group provides formal approval for new consortium start-up and, through the institutional roles of its members, insures alignment of consortium interests with the strategic interests of GCC member institutions.

The GCC organization is as shown in the diagram below.

The GCC's primary role remains to act as a catalytic and facilitating organization to support the continued collaborative contributions of its member institutions and faculty at the most exciting frontiers for developing an understanding of basic biological processes. The Keck Center and GCC research consortia are described in more detail below.

TRAINING

The training arm of the GCC, the Keck Center for Interdisciplinary BioscienceTraining, currently supports over 70 trainees and has over 300 affiliated training faculty through competitive grants from NIH and the W. M. Keck Foundation. Within the Keck Center, the emphasis is on continuing its 16-year successful tradition of fostering interdisciplinary and multi-institutional training, both in computational and structural biology at undergraduate, predoctoral, and postdoctoral levels, as well as in molecular biophysics, nanobiology, pharmacoinformatics, and virus imaging. The Keck Center provides a unique intellectual and physical setting in which to train the next generation of scientists with expertise in multiple disciplines, able to reach across boundaries to advance insight and understanding. The Keck Executive Committee formulates training policy in terms of didactic courses, seminars, workshops, retreats, selecting trainees, and advising Keck Fellows and mentors, while leaving individual program directors latitude to tailor the implementation of these to the unique needs of their program. Both Keck Center faculty and external reviewers have attested to the effectiveness of the Keck Center (and the GCC) and the synergistic benefits of combining complementary research and training programs under the broad umbrella of the GCC.

RESEARCH

The GCC's research arm is comprised of consortia, which serve to catalyze interactions and provide a supportive environment for collaborative research programs that require expertise beyond that available in any one institution. Currently, the GCC supports over 400 faculty engaged with consortia in the following areas: Chemical Genomics, Membrane Biology, Protein Crystallography, Magnetic Resonance, Bioinformatics, and Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience. Centers, such as the Gulf Coast Center for Computational Cancer Research, are focused programs sponsored by a consortium. New consortia, such as the John S. Dunn GCC for Chemical Genomics and the GCC for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, form when faculty come together around a common goal or interest, establish a working vision, and engage interest among the broader faculty community in the GCC. When there is critical mass to commit to a shared vision, the researchers are encouraged to apply to the GCC Oversight Committee for the formation of a new consortium.

Notable accomplishments of the research consortia include the acquisition of two 800 MHz NMRs and a 9.4 Tesla MRI for small animal imaging, development and operation of a beamline at LSU’s synchrotron, and co-sponsorship of the fifth De Lange Conference “Frontiers of Medicine: Society, Pharmacology and Membrane Biology in the Genomic Era,” bringing together preeminent scientists and cultural leaders to explore how we can best use genomic information to advance our basic understanding of biology and improve human health. The initial investment of $3.5 million from the W. M. Keck Foundation in 2001 has been leveraged to generate an estimated additional $10+ million of funding out of over $85 million in new proposals. This does not include individual investigator initiated collaborative proposals and awards arising from GCC-catalyzed interactions between faculty members across institutions and disciplines.