OK. We are all working on common goals of creating an excellent collaborative research environment for our students.” Microvascular research, microfluidic applications, stem cells, optic nerve regeneration, and point-of-care diagnostics are some of the avenues of exploration that the new faculty members are pursuing. Ongoing research in the department includes biomedical electronics, computer controls, and design of devices for people with disabilities. Work on aging issues and new methodologies for training doctors also hold medical promise. Gaver’s own research is on the pulmonary system. Specifically, he focuses on what happens in acute respiratory syndrome, in which people on ventilators suffer damage in the tissues of their lungs.
Basic science payoff Jeff Tasker is a dyed-in-the-wool basic scientist. He’s on the cutting edge of research, exploring new ideas, searching for discoveries. And the work takes time. “It’s a slow process,” says Tasker. “The lag time in science is fairly long for changes to occur in terms of scientific development and evolution of scientific programs.” Tasker, professor of cell and molecular biology in the Tulane School of Science and Engineering, holder of the Catherine and Hunter Pierson Chair in Neuroscience, and director of the neuroscience program at Tulane, has already spent two decades studying the cells of the brain. And he’s made some grand discoveries, including the connection between stress and the production of endogenous cannabinoids, a naturally occurring neurotransmitter in the brain that is similar to the active ingredient of marijuana. His research may one day result in clinical applications relating to eating habits, sexual drive and cognitive functions. But as sexy as his research sounds, the tedious, slow part is doing the legwork, says Tasker, figuring out how all these mechanisms work at the cellular and molecular level. Tasker leads a 12-member lab on the first floor of Percival Stern Hall, including graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, a faculty research professor and technician. Undergraduate P A G E
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students also participate in the research. Altiero says the chance to conduct research as an undergraduate is a big draw for students at Tulane. When he meets prospective freshmen, they invariably ask him, “Will I get an opportunity to do research?” And the answer is yes. More than 200 School of Science and Engineering undergraduates work on funded research projects annually.
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We ,re trying to cut down the lag time between discovery and innovation. The way to drive innovation is to bring cutting-edge science and the people who are doing design closer together.
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Nicholas Altiero, dean of the School of Science and Engineering
While basic science takes a long time, the payoff is great for investment in fundamental research like Tasker’s. Such investment is essential to future innovations in technology, medicine, energy, environmental cleanup, psychological understanding and all kinds of endeavors. Support for Tasker’s research as well as for much of the research conducted in the rest of the School of Science and Engineering largely comes from external federal funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Last year, the school had $20 million in funded research. “We intend to more than double that,” says Altiero, “and with the investments we have made in faculty and infrastructure,
that should be achievable.” Currently, the school ranks third in funded research at Tulane behind the School of Medicine and School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. During his talk at Tulane, Bement noted that scientists like Tasker toil behind the scenes for years before their breakthroughs result in innovations that can hit the marketplace. But that is all the more reason that they need support. It is important to “listen to the hopes, dreams, plans and experiences of individuals,” said Bement, who underscored the importance of creating a seamless flow between discovery and application. “The development of marketable products is the direct result of continuous investments over many years in transformative, risk-taking research,” said Bement. “In turn, these innovations strengthen the economy.”
The language of science A thread that sews together science and engineering is mathematics. It is their common language. Gaver, along with mathematics professors Lisa Fauci and Ricardo Cortez, started the Center for Computational Science at Tulane in 2001. They set out to have a place where experimentalists and computational investigators could talk to each other and begin collaborations. Computational modeling of experiments provides scientists and engineers with analytical tools to test hypotheses—and can offer shortcuts to discovery, accelerating the science, says Cortez, the center’s director. Computational investigators benefit from having interaction with experimentalists because it gives the mathematicians the opportunity to test their computations against reality. Data from experiments adds to the complexity and challenges of computer modeling, while the computational science provides the experimentalists with an extra dimension to their work. It may show them features that they hadn’t seen before, Cortez says. “But they don’t have to take my word for it,” Cortez adds. “They can design an experiment to determine if those features are really there. It may point to new experiments.” Cortez has collaborated on neuroscience experiments, as well as projects to develop