MORGANTOWN — Health sciences researchers and students gathered at WVU’s Erickson Alumni Center on Monday to celebrate their work and what it means for the state.
It was the second day of the WVU Van Liere and West Virginia IDeA Research Conference. Day one included undergraduate research presentations and posters. Day two included research symposia and a keynote address by Dr. Ali Rezai, executive chair of WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute.
The Van Liere conference began in 1965, named for Dr. Edward J. Van Liere, the dean of the School of Medicine from 1937-60 and considered the “father” of the Health Sciences Center.
Ming Lei, senior associate vice president of WVU Health Sciences Office of Research and Graduate Education, emceed Monday’s program and celebrated the long history of the conference.
“The tradition is well and growing at WVU, he said. “The research is cutting edge and making breakthroughs.”
This year, WVU invited IDeA-supported researchers and students from across the state. The National Institute of Health explains that IDeA is a congressionally mandated program that builds research capacity in states with low levels of NIH funding. The program aims to strengthen institutions’ ability to support biomedical research, enhance the competitiveness of investigators in securing research funding, and catalyze clinical and translational research that addresses the needs of IDeA state populations.
The theme of the day, though, was that research isn’t an end in itself. It has to benefit the public.
Rezai reviewed the cutting-edge research going on at RNI — research that’s garnered national attention and drawn other researchers from other universities and countries to WVU to see what’s going on in West Virginia, he said.
He covered neuromodulation (planting electrodes in the brain), deep brain stimulation to tackle such things as epilepsy, Parkinson’s and stroke; focused ultrasound to deliver neuromodulation energy deep into the brain for those same conditions, chronic pain, dementia and such things as reducing the cravings that help drive addiction; and paper-thin film brain-computer interfaces to help people with neurological injuries and disabilities function and communicate.
Rezai emphasized that the work isn’t accomplished by individual researchers operating in isolation. It involves hundreds of people — collaborative teams working across disciplines. He presented slides full of pictures of researchers, research support staff, engineers, office staff and more.
“Really it’s about the team and the environment,” he said. “It’s about a team that’s really passionate and wants to make a difference. … The center is the patient.”
Dr. Clay Marsh, chancellor and executive dean of WVU Health Sciences, drove home that patient-centered, people-centric vision.
“You have the ability to change the future in a wonderful way,” he told the graduate and undergraduate students, saying they can improve the lives of West Virginians and those across the nation and globe. “We want to democratize solutions that we find that can help people live better lives.”
Along the way he quoted insights from Mahatma Ghandi, George Bernard Shaw, Albert Einstein, the Dali Lama, Mother Teresa and more about seeking, questioning, asking why, and about a truth he learned from them: “It is the privilege of service.”
Citing those thinkers and doers, he said: “Joy is service. Service is joy.” And the definition of community is “together in service.”
He told them, “I am so happy and grateful that each one of you are here and that you’re doing work that can help other people. We stand here to serve you so you can best serve other people.”
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