The Institute for Clinical and Translational Science (ICTS) is the epicenter of clinical and translational research at the University of Iowa. It is home to the NIH funded Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) at the University of Iowa and is one of only 46 facilities of its kind in the nation. As a member of the CTSA consortium, we are dedicated to providing the synergy, resources, and experience necessary to forge networks and develop new cures and treatments for disease. We help establish unique collaborations because we believe everyone plays an important role in advancing the nation's health.
We value working with a diverse community. We work with scholars from every discipline at the University of Iowa. Our purpose is to improve health care, and to successfully achieve this goal we think it is important to include the scholarly advances offered by musicians, art historians, social scientists, and other academic experts as well. We also work with scholars, staff, administrators, and community members throughout the state to help inspire new research and accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, disease prevention, and health care treatment on a national level.
We offer numerous educational, teaching, and mentoring programs and provide various indispensable research resources. Some of our most popular resources include Loki, our web-based networking application that promotes collaboration across the disciplines, database storage and design, biostatistical analysis, IRB assistance, and the like. We also provide pilot grants for interesting and new clinical and translational research studies.
We also invite you to visit this web site often to learn more about our infrastructure, current events, important news items and updates, and our ever expanding wealth of research resources. We encourage you to send us your ideas, stories, events, photos, and/or videos related to clinical and translational science and unique partnerships/collaborations so we can publicly share these milestones. Please contact our editor Jenn Laskowski, for further information.
The ICTS helps advance patient care in numerous ways. As a part of the NIH consortium of clinical and translational research centers, the ICTS is plugged into a vast network of scientists who are focused on improving human health. Research ideas generated at The University of Iowa can be communicated across the consortium. Scientists connected with other consortium universities can participate in discussions about those ideas, suggesting avenues of inquiry, approaches to tackling the issues, and offering assistance in developing and pursuing a research project. The result is stronger, more focused collaborations that include world-class researchers across many disciplines. To put it another way, the best and brightest scientists can seek out colleagues across The University of Iowa and around the country to participate in their research work, regardless of where those colleagues make their home.
Another way the ICTS and its partners in the consortium promote innovations in patient care is by organizing conferences and symposiums that bring together researchers from across multiple disciplines to focus on a particular topic. In April 2008, The University of Iowa ICTS sponsored such a conference on obesity. It attracted more than 80 faculty members from the UI, many of whom had never met each other. During six breakout sessions, the issues of obesity were examined and discussed from a multitude of perspectives, from the basic biology of the human body to the impact of socioeconomic situations on obesity.
