UM College Park and Baltimore Campuses Celebrate First Year of Collaborative Success

UM College Park and Baltimore Campuses Celebrate First Year of Collaborative Success

University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) President Jay Perman and University of Maryland, College Park President Wallace Loh celebrate the first year of the University of Maryland: MPowering the State collaboration. One year ago, the Board of Regents of the University System of Maryland (USM), with guidance from the Maryland General Assembly, charted this bold new course, using the resources of the two universities to better serve students, attract more exceptional faculty and researchers, and boost research, technology transfer and commercialization.

"Maryland has tremendous competitive advantages in research and education," says USM Chancellor William Kirwan.  "In just one year, MPowering the State is already producing significant results, creating new business partnerships and jobs."

A core mission of MPowering the State is better commercializing the more than one billion dollars in grant-based research conducted by the two universities.  "We launched UM Ventures because it positions us to strengthen our technology transfer efforts and commercialization statewide," says University of Maryland, College Park President Wallace Loh.  "A fully coordinated innovation ecosystem and unified technology transfer improves our ability to work with industry and bring innovative products to the market."

MPowering the State is also providing new educational opportunities for Maryland students, including the creation of a collaborative school of public health, which will build upon the strengths of the existing School of Public Health in College Park and the epidemiology and public health program in the School of Medicine in Baltimore. "Students have greatly improved opportunities to take advantage of the complementary strengths of both campuses," says UMB President Jay Perman. "And they'll be better equipped to take their place in the high quality, increasingly complex health care system of Maryland's future."

Other accomplishments of MPowering the State's first year include:

• Creating a new center for health-related informatics and bioimaging, combining the advanced computing resources of College Park with the clinical data and biomedical expertise of UMB;
• Creating the Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSI), leveraging the health sciences work of UMB and the engineering expertise of College Park;
• Implementing a seed grant program, resulting in more than $6 million in joint research awards;
• Combining the research efforts at the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research—a joint UMB-UMCP institute—and those at the Universities at Shady Grove (USG) in Montgomery County with new educational programs in health, law, human services and the sciences; and
• Working together with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on the Institute for a Healthiest Maryland (IHM) to improve wellness in areas such as obesity and tobacco prevention.

The University of Maryland: MPowering the State brings together two universities of distinction to form a new collaborative partnership.  Harnessing the resources of each, the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland, Baltimore will focus the collective expertise on critical state-wide issues of public health, biomedical informatics, and bioengineering. This collaboration will drive an even greater impact on the state, its economy, the job market, and the next generation of innovators.  The joint initiatives will have a profound effect on productivity, the economy, and the very fabric of higher education.

March 28, 2013