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Overview
Keck Center
Training Programs
Recruiting
Governance
Administrative Role
of the Keck Center
History of the Keck Center
GCC Home
provides information about
the Keck Center Training Programs
and the GCC Research Consortia
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Refreshments on the Keck Hall portico after the Keck Seminar
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The GCC’s Administrative Director, Lisa Blinn, greets a visitor to the Keck Center booth at SACNAS
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About the W. M. Keck Center for Interdisciplinary Bioscience Training
Overview
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"I would like to thank you very much for your support. The fellowship not only provides funding, but also helped me to connect to the local computational structural biology community, especially important for me, as I just have moved to Houston in 2003. The work of the W. M. Keck Center is outstanding and should be a model for other, similar initiatives."
Stefan Birmanns,
Keck Postdoctoral Trainee, UTHSCH
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The primary mission of the GCC’s training arm, the W. M. Keck Center for Interdisciplinary Bioscience Training, is to foster the training of the next generation of scientists with interdisciplinary expertise in areas where the biological sciences intersect with the physical, chemical, computational, mathematical and engineering sciences. The expertise, mission, and research programs of the Keck Center institutions are highly complementary and come together to provide 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 our insight and understanding. Primary areas of emphasis for the Keck Center have been on computational and mathematical developments that advance biomedicine and biology with applications to structural biology from the organismal to the molecular and atomic levels. They encompass bio- and health informatics, imaging and modeling of complex systems, dynamics and behavior of macromolecules and cellular assemblies. The Keck Center programs provides multi- and inter-disciplinary training, combining theoretical and experimental approaches.
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“In the Keck community, interactions with faculty with a variety of expertise and peer students from various backgrounds gave me a much clearer picture of what [being] a scientist is all about, and prepared me for the next phase of my education and career. The weekly seminars and the annual conferences greatly broaden my views of the Computational Biology field. I am proud and fortunate to be a part of this great Fellowship.”
Wei Dai, Keck Fellow,
Baylor College of Medicine
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There are now over 270 Keck Center training faculty engaged in the ten Keck Center training programs. The Keck Center now supports over 70 Keck Fellows funded through these interdisciplinary training programs.
Keck Center Training Programs (Return to top)
The Keck Center nurtures its trainees and stimulates the intellectual curiosity of the faculty at large, many of whom also wish to engage with disciplines outside of their traditional field of training, through a number of learning opportunities, including didactic courses, sponsored symposia, workshops, weekly seminars and monthly journal clubs. Individual programs hold trainee-led Fellows dinner meetings monthly. These have proven to be highly successful venues for social and intellectual interchange, with the impact of providing trainees opportunities to build a network of peers with common interests, gain exposure to diverse disciplines within their field, grow their leadership skills, obtain experience collaborating as part of team and polish their presentation skills in a peer setting.
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“We were highly impressed with the functioning of the Keck Center and the Gulf Coast Consortia as the collegial and cross-institutional homes for the program…. It is clear to us that this program works. It works because of the collaborative environment among and within the sites … and the willingness of everyone to sacrifice a bit of the local agenda for the common benefit.”
Charles P. Friedman, Ph.D., Program Officer,
National Library of Medicine;
from the Report - April 15, 2004 Site Visit to the
GCC / Keck Center Program in Computational
Biology and Medicine
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As has been the Keck Center’s tradition, each Friday during the fall and spring semesters, the GCC’s Keck Center holds a weekly Keck Seminar, followed by refreshments. The quality and diversity of speakers has served to attract an ever-increasing audience of faculty and trainees, which now averages 80 attendees per seminar, including the two institutions served via two-way videoconference broadcast. The Keck seminar has proven to be a valuable venue for fostering vibrant intellectual interchange and strengthening the relationships between faculty across disciplines, an important prelude to collaboration.
In addition to the Keck Seminar speakers, the GCC’s research consortia host speakers throughout the year, often jointly sponsored with institution departments and centers or with other collaborative organizations. The GCC / Keck Center hosts annually over 30 speakers, with a mix of faculty from the local community, as well as internationally recognized scientists.
Keck Center trainees participate in two Keck Center sponsored / sponsored research conferences, which provide a valuable opportunity for trainees and faculty from a range of disciplines to interact for a full day in a less-structured setting away from campus. In the fall, the GCC holds its Annual Research Conference. With over 250 attendees, 100 posters, and Keck Faculty and invited speaker presentations, the conference provides a rich environment for extended faculty-trainee, faculty-faculty and trainee-trainee interactions. The annual Sealy Structural Biology Symposium, held at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in May, includes invited speakers, over 100 posters and approximately 250 participants. As with the Keck Center’s Annual Research Conference, this event serves to provide trainees valuable experience in developing and presenting posters and gives them excellent exposure to leading scientists in their fields, as well as introduces them to disciplines new to them and complementary to those in which they work.
The Keck Center has established processes for trainee recruitment, application, selection, and evaluation that all training programs use. The web-based systems for the Keck Center are program-neutral, yet can be customized to meet the requirements of each training program to allow efficient on-line applications, streamlined evaluation by the Training Committee, and long-term tracking of Keck Fellows. The GCC/Keck administrative team helps coordinate courses across training programs and institutions; arranges seminars, workshops, and retreats; facilitates appointments of trainees; handles inter-institutional financial arrangements (e.g., tuition payments and stipends); and enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of the interaction among faculty and trainees. The administrative mechanisms for transferring funds and course credits and sharing faculty for research and training are well established and supported at the highest levels of all six institutions, and the GCC staff ensures effective communications and operations between all of them. In addition to managing the inter-institutional Keck Center training programs, Keck Center staff provide expertise in proposal and post-award reporting.
Recruiting (Return to top)
A key component of our recruiting is our Web site (www.gulfcoastconsortia.org), which has descriptions of research, application information, policies, and other information for easy access online. In addition to the Web site, we regularly distribute posters to colleagues at other institutions across the country. Because predoctoral trainees must enter a participating degree-granting department in one of our GCC member institutions, most of our pool of applicants comes from those departments, which seek graduate students nationally and internationally with Web-based materials, flyers, brochures, videos, and other presentations. Recruiters from GCC institutions (faculty, staff, and students) participate in national and international meetings that attract applicants that are specifically interested in the disciplines encompassed by our programs. Recruiters from our member institutions also go to colleges and universities that have graduate and career fairs or open houses that allow potential applicants to learn about the GCC institutions and their research programs.
Summer research programs offered by several GCC institutions offer additional recruiting venues where applicants can volunteer in a research laboratory. In addition, we direct students who express their interest to the Keck Center to the GCC member institutions’ departments that most clearly match their interests.
Postdoctoral trainees generally contact a specific individual whose research areas are of great interest to them. When appropriate, these faculty will direct the potential trainee to one of the Keck Center programs.
All Keck Center member institutions engage in targeted efforts to enhance recruitment of minority students. The activities in which the Keck Center also participates and which have significant institutional programs detailed below include attendance of faculty and graduate students at national meetings (NIH Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minorities (ABRCM), Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) events, Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) events, etc.). The Keck Center encourages its member institutions to co-locate booth space to underscore the rich research resources within Gulf Coast institutions and the inter-institutional collaboration that facilitates trainee access to these through our training programs, irrespective of the trainee’s home institution. Many departments also contact SACNAS and MARC faculty and students on a regular basis. Visits to various regional recruiting fairs (e.g., Texas Swing) expand further the contacts – and Keck Center students often accompany faculty and staff. Keck Center member institutions have developed numerous contacts through the years at local (Texas Southern University, Prairie View A&M, University of Houston Downtown campus), state, and national levels with MARC programs and sizeable minority undergraduate populations. These activities and contacts will be used to aid advertisement and recruitment for our training program.
Governance (Return to top)
The Keck Center is program-centric, governed by the Keck Executive Committee and with a steering committee for each training grant established to focus on the unique aims and program components required to support these aims. The Keck Executive Committee includes the Training Program Directors, the Keck Center Institutional Training Directors and Members At-large as needed to make sure each of the GCC’s Keck Center member institution are represented.
The Keck Executive Committee’s role is to provide oversight to the training programs and to coordinate common training program elements, such as events and curriculum-related matters. The Keck Executive Committee guides training grant PIs and steering teams to develop and maintain a vibrant, collaborative, and interdisciplinary training environment. Primary areas of responsibility include the approval of appointments to training faculty proposed by individual grant steering teams, screening of potential applicants to guide them to an appropriate training program, administration of common processes across training grants, and oversight of training activities and curriculum (Keck Seminar, courses, conferences). The Keck Executive Committee meets monthly and has met continuously for the past 15 years since the inception of the Keck Center.
Individual training programs are responsible for activities to create a cohort identity and more intimate set of relationships among trainees and with the relevant training faculty.
Administrative Role of the Keck Center (Return to top)
The Keck Center provides an operational umbrella that integrates and coordinates activities that encompass the following: planning and scheduling of courses across training program and school lines; scheduling and advertising seminars, workshops, and retreats; administrative staff support for advertising positions and selecting appointees; web site management; handling inter-institutional financial arrangements (e.g., tuition payments and stipends); videoconferencing between institutions (BCM and UTMB are video-linked to RU for the Friday Keck Seminar) and other sites as needed; managing the progress review process; and providing any other functions that enhance the efficiency, effectiveness, and interaction among faculty and trainees. The Keck Center also assists with preparation of proposals and post-award reporting. A functioning office and staff, with effective procedures in place, insures that administrative aspects of the Keck Center training programs are successfully implemented. These are enhanced by web-based systems to support key processes, such as application, applicant review and selection, and progress review. This arrangement allows each program to develop its own identity, curriculum, and unique activities, while taking advantage of the tremendous intellectual and physical resources of related efforts.
The frequently unassailable barriers to cooperative efforts have been lowered dramatically by the efforts of the Keck Center. Thus, the administrative mechanisms for transferring funds and course credits and sharing faculty for teaching and training are well established and supported at the highest levels of the institutions.
History of the Keck Center (Return to top)
In 1989, with the support of the W. M. Keck Foundation, Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and Rice University (RU) joined to found the W. M. Keck Center for Computational Biology to foster collaborations among biologists, biochemists, and computer and mathematical scientists and to develop and deploy new, more powerful tools for biological research. The University of Houston (UH) joined this effort in 1992, and The University of Texas Health Science Center (UT-H) was added to this community of scholars in 1998 to further strengthen the training and research capabilities of the Center. In 2001, the four institutions participating in the Keck Center joined with The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center (MDA) and The University of Texas Medical Branch Galveston (UTMB) to create the six-member Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC). The Presidents of the six GCC member institutions signed a formal Memorandum of Agreement to commits funds and support to this endeavor, including the Keck Center. This agreement was renewed in March 2004 for an additional three years and at an increased level of support in recognition of the value the GCC’s training and research programs bring to each of its member institutions.
The GCC continues to evolve with a key focus on its mission—to foster collaborative research and training at the intersection of the biological sciences with the computational, physical, mathematical and engineering sciences by bringing together the unique capabilities of GCC member institutions to develop unique programs beyond the reach of any one institution. The vision of the GCC is to provide a formal and lasting mechanism for advancing biological sciences in the 21st century. We aim to develop multi- and interdisciplinary training programs for faculty and students to develop their knowledge and build cutting edge research infrastructure to collect and analyze novel data that crosses scientific disciplines. The goal is to address the challenging biological questions of our time and to apply the resulting knowledge to the treatment and prevention of disease. The GCC’s training arm, the Keck Center, is the organizational center for the training components of the GCC’s mission.
Four institutions, Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, reside on the Texas Medical Center (TMC) campus within walking distance of each other. The University of Houston is located approximately two miles from the TMC, and The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston is approximately 50 miles away within an hour's drive. Given the proximity of the GCC member institutions to each other (see below) and the significant resources of the Texas Medical Center and, the GCC is uniquely positioned to execute its mission and make progress towards achieving its vision.
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