I Heart Oswego - Upstate, Area SUNY Institutions Share in $18M State Grant

Wednesday, 04 November 2015 17:53

Upstate, Area SUNY Institutions Share in $18M State Grant

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Officials from SUNY Oswego and Upstate Medical University met recently to discuss research collaborations and tour Upstate’s research facilities. One collaboration between the two is the SUNY Labs to Jobs Consortium that received a recent $18 million state grant. Touring the Neurosciences Research Building Oct. 9 from SUNY Oswego are, from left, Pam Caraccioli, deputy to the president for economic development and external partnerships; President Deborah Stanley; and Isabelle Bichindaritz, PhD, director of biomedical sciences; with the Upstate Professor Peter Calvert, PhD, who conducts vision research. Submitted photo

Upstate Medical University will share an $18 million state grant with four other SUNY institutions—Onondaga Community College, Morrisville State College, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, SUNY Oswego—to establish a consortium that will provide students and businesses access to the advanced labs and simulation centers in the areas of health, biomedical services and biosciences, advanced manufacturing, agribusiness and food processing.

The funding, announced by Gov. Cuomo Sept. 30, is from the governor’s NYSUNY 2020 Challenge Grant program.

The SUNY Labs to Jobs Consortium will use the funding, in part, to build or enhance the following labs (campus sponsor is in parenthesis.):

• Medical Simulation Center (Upstate)
• “Smart Health” Biomedical Health Information Research Lab (Oswego)
• Biomedical Instrumentation Lab and Bioinformatics Wireless Network Development
(Oswego)
• Food Science and Culinary Lab and Business Simulation Classrooms (OCC)
• Training and Entrepreneurial Lab (OCC)
• Biomimicry Computer and Field Labs (ESF)
• Production Sciences/Advanced Manufacturing Lab and Allied Health Lab (Morrisville)

Each lab will allow students the opportunity for applied learning, a chance to learn, refine and enhance their skills in a simulated environment before entering the workforce. The facilities will support existing and new educational programs that will provide even more relevant workforce preparedness.

Use of the labs can be extended to serve as a training facility for further education or credentialing for a variety of fields.

The facilities also will allow faculty and business partners the opportunity to perform advance research or test and incubate business ideas.

“The establishment of this consortium with our SUNY partners speaks to the power of collaboration that will benefit our students as we sharpen our focus on enhancing their skills,” said David Duggan, MD, dean of the College of Medicine at Upstate.

Duggan noted that the labs at Upstate and SUNY Oswego will be sites dedicated to teaching skills that range from the application of big data to the improvement in population health and quality and the development of personalized medicine.

Duggan said the labs have the added benefit of serving as resources for economic development. “There is the potential that these labs will also be starting points for business collaborations, perhaps in our case the development of new instrumentation for the surgical suite.”

All labs are expected to be open by the summer of 2017.