June 3, 2005 - Issue Six
:: Institute Announces New Name, Mission, Vision On May 26 the Research Institute held a celebratory event to unveil its new name and logo, as well as its new mission, vision and values, to institute staff, investigators and trainees. Over the coming months the institute will be re-designing its stationery, newsletters, website and other materials to incorporate the new logo and visual identity. The logo will be available for use by staff and research programs by early July; graphic standards advising how to utilize the logo on materials are currently being developed. Child & Family Research Institute Mission The Child & Family Research Institute (CFRI) conducts discovery research to benefit the health of children and their families. Vision - Science Making Miracles We passionately pursue discovery, knowing our achievements have the capacity to transform lives. Values We work in an environment that values: • Integrity • Excellence • Transformation • Interaction • Openness At the event, institute Executive Director Dr. Stuart MacLeod emphasized that the new name, mission and vision position the institute for growth and international recognition as a leading-edge research institute. They also incorporate the areas of children’s and women’s health research that the institute currently excels at, including areas such as maternal-fetal medicine and medical genetics, while broadly encompassing all the research being done at the institute that benefits both children and their families. The institute’s main research programs are: Community Child Health; Diabetes; Health Innovation & Improvement; Infectious & Inflammatory Diseases; Molecular Medicine & Therapeutics; Oncology; and Reproductive Health. Its crosscutting research programs are: Clinical Investigation; Genetics; Immunology & Transplantation; Informatics; Neurobiology & Mental Health; and Nutrition. |
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| :: Recent Recruit: Michael Kobor - Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics Chromatin is the DNA-histone protein complex that efficiently packages the genetic information within each cell, and affects almost all aspects of chromosome behaviour and genome function. Chromatin modifications, which can be inherited, and the regulation of the enzymes responsible for adding or subtracting them, have been shown to be critical for driving the mutation, loss, and aberrant regulation of genes resulting in disease. Using yeast and other models of human disease, Dr. Kobor and his research team will apply innovative genomic and proteomic technologies to investigate questions such as how distinct chromosomal neighbourhoods are established, how they function and interact with enzymes involved in DNA metabolism and how they maintain genome integrity. Additionally, Dr. Kobor is identifying the function of a protein family that works within chromatin and is involved in cancers such as leukemia and glioma. |
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Grants & Awards Fay Warnock Awarded SSHRC Grant for Infant Pain Study The researchers' studies to date have enabled them to distinguish newborn distress behaviour specific to pain and to detect patterns suggestive of pain-related impairments in infant self-regulation (prolonged pain recovery). Recently, Dr. Oberlander discovered that infants prenatally exposed to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) show a blunted pain response at birth – the group has begun to clarify these findings by examining the role that context and environmental factors (complex health care settings and caregiving by depressed mothers and by health professionals) play on infant pain reactivity. The SSHRC funding will allow them to further distinguish pain and stress reactivity in the SSRI-exposed and the non SSRI-exposed infants and to more closely examine caregiver-infant interaction on infant ability to self-regulate or recover from pain. Dr. Warnock's project receives approximately $183,000 over three years. She credits the institute's Research Development Office with helping to make the application a successful one. "We worked on this application while I was abroad. The support received from the RDO was simply amazing," says Dr. Warnock. Research Development Facilitator Dr. Dawn McArthur, and Assistant Facilitator Meghan MacLeod, of the Research Development Office collaborate with investigators to build research ideas and target new funding opportunities, and assist with grant application development. Innovative Collaboration Aims to Improve Safety of Anesthesia Dr. Mark Ansermino, anesthesiologist and investigator with the institute's Centre for Health Innovation & Improvement, is a co-applicant on an innovative research project that proposes to use computer technology initially developed for virtual reality applications to increase the effectiveness of patient monitoring and thereby improve the safety of anesthesia. The project was just awarded a Collaborative Health Research Project grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Improving the safety of anesthesia has long been a goal of clinicians, and ever-increasing arrays of equipment have been developed to help monitor changes in a patient’s physiology. However, each new monitor adds to the anesthesiologist’s workload and pushes the bounds of normal human concentration. To avoid having clinicians miss abnormalities, alarms are set to attract attention to significant physiological state changes. However, up to 95 percent of alarms are false, and are triggered only when a potentially critical situation is imminent. The project “Touch your patient: tactile display of physiological monitoring” proposes to use sensory stimulators to provide pulses of vibration corresponding to changes in a patient to attending clinicians. Skin is the body’s largest sense organ and responds to stimuli with a high degree of precision; tactile communication can provide subtle clues, rather than outright alarms, about physiological changes in a patient, without adding to the already busy stream of auditory and visual information being monitored. The researchers propose that by alerting anesthesiologists’ attention to minor changes as soon as they occur such a device could prevent more serious situations from arising and therefore reduce the number of times traditional alarm systems are triggered. The use of a tactile device to communicate clinical information is a novel concept. The project is a collaboration among Dr. Ansermino, Clinical Assistant Professor, UBC Department of Medicine; Dr. Guy Dumont, Professor, UBC Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Dr. Sidney Fels, Associate Professor, UBC Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Dr. Stephan Schwarz, Assistant Professor, UBC Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Dr. Dumont is the project’s principal applicant. NSERC and CIHR announced the results of the sixth competition for Collaborative Health Research Projects on May 26. NSERC received 159 applications for the competitions; seventeen applications were selected for funding. For a listing of grants and awards to members of the Research Institute's community for the period February 2005 to May 2005, see our Grants & Awards posting. |
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Reminders: Posting Employment Opportunities Instructions and forms for submitting Employment Opportunities postings are located on the section's Overview page. Positions are organized by research program under the subheadings Administration, Faculty and Trainees. Please note that the Research Institute only posts employment opportunities available at the institute and/or associated with the institute's researchers and research programs. We do not post employment opportunities available with other organizations, companies or institutes. |
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The Research Institute is pleased to welcome Dr. Michael Kobor, who arrived in April 2005 from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Kobor is an investigator with the institute's Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (CMMT), and joins the University of British Columbia (UBC) as Assistant Professor, Department of Medical Genetics. In May, he was awarded a Career Investigator Award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. Dr. Kobor's research focuses on the molecular biology of chromatin as it relates to the development of cancer, respiratory disease and other childhood illnesses. 
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The Research Institute is currently inviting senior scientists to apply to head its Oncology Research Program, and to provide research and academic leadership within the University of British Columba's Division of Pediatric Oncology. The successful candidate will be appointed as a Senior Scientist with the institute and a full-time faculty member of UBC. One of the institute's main programs, the Oncology Research Program conducts world-class research on new and improved strategies for treating cancer in children and women. The program currently supports five scientists/clinician scientists and their trainees, who have access to comprehensive research, educational and core services offered by the institute. The candidate will be expected to build on an already established independent research program, and to compete nationally and internationally for operating grants. The anticipated start date for the position is on or before July 1, 2006. Closing dates for applications is September 15, 2005. For more information see the posting under the Employment Opportunities section of the website. |
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