A N ATO M Y O F C H A N G E U B R I S 2 E C E N T E R I S R E TO O L I N G H OW T H E H U M A N B O DY I S S T U D I E D
Cutline here Cutline here Cutline here Cutline here Cutline here Cutline here Cutline here Cutline here Cutline here Cutline here Cutline here Cutline here Cutline here Cutline here Cutline here Cutline here Cutline here
A
Once fully equipped, the Surgical Skills Suite will be a specialized space for surgical residents to train and physicians to receive continuing medical education.
new vision for studying the human body is taking shape in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The transformation is being led by UB pathologists, structural scientists and surgeons who are teaming up to optimize state-of-the-art features designed into the Jacobs School’s building for this purpose. This new initiative—called UB RIS2E (Research, Innovation, Simulation, Structure, Education)— is based on Level 7 of the building, where conversations are already taking place that would not normally occur across disciplines.
CONNECTIONS BY DESIGN “This facility was built purposefully to make these conversations flow,” says John Tomaszewski, MD, the SUNY Distinguished Professor and Peter A. Nickerson, PhD, Chair of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences at the Jacobs School. “It was planned out and driven from concept to construction.” In some ways, the center’s focus on pathology and anatomy puts UB at odds with trends in medical education, explains Tomaszewski, who notes that a number of medical schools have dismantled entire anatomy departments, choosing instead to focus almost exclusively
22
WINTER 2018
UB MEDICINE
on digital approaches. “We think that’s absolutely wrong,” he says. “There’s tremendous and important meaning in human structure.” To develop and execute this concept, Tomaszewski was recruited from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011, and Steven Schwaitzberg, MD, professor and chair of surgery, from Harvard University in 2015. Tomaszewski has been at the forefront of advances in digital pathology and computational modeling, using the data these techniques generate to push the fields of integrated diagnostics and personalized predictive medicine. Schwaitzberg directed an innovation center at Tufts University School of Medicine/New England Medical Center for nearly two decades. During that time, he pioneered minimally invasive and robotic surgical techniques and developed a microwave blood warming technology approved by the Food and Drug Administration and now in routine use. Together, they envision UB RIS2E as being a multidisciplinary center that educates learners at every level—from medical students to practicing physicians and surgeons—about the human body in the most comprehensive way possible. “Our facility has this integration of people: surgeons working with
Photo by Douglas Levere
BY ELLEN GOLDBAUM