 |
|
Victor Weedn Leads the University's Biotechnology and Health Initiatives
The computer is the indispensable tool driving this new century's revelations of life's biological mysteries.
Carnegie Mellon University's contributions to computer technology have established it as a major contributor to information technology and rocketed the school into competition with America's leading research universities and laboratories.
Carnegie Mellon is now focusing its computational leadership and its strengths in interdisciplinary innovation and problem solving on biotechnology and its applications.
Carnegie Mellon President Jared L. Cohon has named Victor W. Weedn, M.D., J.D., Principal Research Scientist, and Director of Biotechnology and Health Initiatives to oversee this strategic effort.
"Our most promising path is to open the puzzles of biotechnology to all the brain power in the university," said Weedn.
"Carnegie Mellon teems with extraordinary research minds and an ability to turn discoveries into powerful applications.
"Many successful biotechnology programs have been underway here for more than a decade. Medical robotics, for example, is a brilliant extension of computer capabilities joining with the ingenuity of robotic engineers and medical doctors.
"This work is revolutionizing surgical procedures, spawning new businesses and offering graduate and undergraduate students new career fields.
"Many others, such as Bone Tissue Engineering, the Center for Light Microscope Imaging and Biotechnology, Computational Molecular Biology, the Center for Neural Basis of Cognition, and the Center for Brain Imaging, are well established, producing breakthrough R&D and edging toward major discoveries.
"The skills and inventiveness of our student body have made Carnegie Mellon famous. It is clear to them that biotechnology will dominate other areas of research in the coming decades. Money is the fuel that drives the research engine and it is flowing into biotechnology.
"Our schools are anticipating the special training needed to prepare them-such as computational biology and chemistry-and already offer a variety of bio-related courses not available elsewhere. More will soon follow.
"Our biotechnology effort is designed to promote a vast scientific movement ideally suited to the established resources and talents of Carnegie Mellon's faculty and students. There can be no question that biotechnology is going to change world culture in this century. Carnegie Mellon is equipped and determined to play its role."
Victor Weedn is a principal research scientist with appointments in the sciences, engineering, and public policy and management. He is internationally known for forensic DNA typing.
He conceived and established the U.S. military's DNA identification program and pioneered identification analytic methods including STR analysis, the standard method for crime labs worldwide, and mitochondrial DNA analysis, capillary electrophoretic, mass spectrometric, and microchip technologies.
His present research concerns microchip electronic detection systems, suspension bead micro-array technology and an artificial eye.
|
Click here for more University News
|
|
|
