New Engineering and Precision Medicine Center Announced
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai will create the Center for Engineering and Precision Medicine (CEPM), one of the first centers in the nation to bridge engineering and engineering science with medicine.
An evolution of the partnership between the two academic institutions, CEPM will build on shared basic research discoveries, explore unique therapeutic innovations in cancer, Alzheimer's, tissue degeneration, and infectious diseases; educate a new generation of biomedical leaders; and develop new technologies and processes that enhance patient outcomes in unprecedented ways.
The center at 619 West 54th Street in Manhattan will drive advances in point-of-care and point-of-use devices and diagnostics; microphysiological platforms for discovery and diagnosis; robotic surgery; biomedical imaging; therapeutics biomanufacturing; and artificial intelligence and machine learning applied to biomedical data. These engineering advances will improve patients' quality of life by synergizing state-of-the-art expertise in research and education at the nexus of engineering and medicine.
"This transformative partnership between Rensselaer and Icahn Mount Sinai recognizes that engineering and engineering science is fundamental to the understanding of biomedical phenomena and is essential to the development of the next generation of precision diagnostics and therapeutics, human health and well-being, and to the training of advanced researchers and physicians," said Shirley Ann Jackson, PhD, President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. "Innovative research is a foundation of Rensselaer, as our students, faculty, and graduates continue to change the world through scientific and technological advances. This center will continue to fuel medical and scientific discoveries with life-changing impacts across the globe."
"From highly sensitive and accurate bioimaging systems to new drug target discoveries, the major inventions that have shaped modern medicine were born out of close collaboration between engineers and clinicians," said Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and President for Academic Affairs of the Mount Sinai Health System. "The CEPM presents a bold new paradigm for that collaboration to continue that we believe will result in unprecedented advances in science, medicine, and human health. In addition, the PhD program will enable us to attract and equip a new generation of researchers with the interdisciplinary engineering and clinical skills to pursue more groundbreaking, impactful research."