After nearly three years of an intensive selection process, the committee at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery has finalized the facility’s five research themes.
The research institute houses the public WID and the private Morgridge Institute for Research and is currently under construction on the 1300 block of University Avenue. According to John Wiley, interim WID director, the funding of the institute is in the 2009-11 state budget and is slated for a December 2010 completion.
The WID Program Committee began the selection process with 26 pre-proposal themes. The group consisted of 11 people including Chancellor Biddy Martin and Wiley, who served as chancellor from 2001 to 2008.
“We narrowed it down from 26 to 12, primarily on how responsive they were to the conditions we put into the requests for the proposals,” Wiley said. “They had to involve two or more of the three technologies — informational technology, biotechnology or nanotechnology — and had to meet a number of other criteria.”
According to a statement, the 12 proposals were then peer-reviewed by internal and external experts in respective research fields, with each proposal receiving at least one external and two internal reviews. The committee made the final selections in June, choosing five themes that best “fit” together.
Included in the research themes are those focusing on epigenetics and relations between research gene activation, dysfunction and diseases; tissue engineering that with microscopic cell scaffolds to help transform stem cells in specialized cells; systems biology; the development of diagnostic and therapeutic technology and management of health information at home; and optimization of biology and medicine as it applies to radiation treatment for cancer and medical uncertainties.
Following the December 2010 facility completion, the WID will be in a search for its new director. Wiley said he plans has no other plans following the completion of his term.
“My job personally is to get the whole thing started, get all of the administrative details worked out, get the research themes selected and make sure that it all gets launched well,” Wiley said. “Sometime in the first year or so after it opens, I’m sure we’ll have a search for it’s director and I’ll probably just retire.”
