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Professor Office:
OF-411 "The industrial and academic sectors understand that its fundamental task is to create and implement a policy to increase the economic growth rate of Puerto Rico and, at the same time, facilitate its insertion into the global knowledge and technology driven economy, with the government playing a supporting and nurturing role."
An important goal of this policy is to strengthen the contribution of the universities to research and development and innovation in areas with a potential for commercialization. This will bring a paradigm shift in the Island's economy from one depending on manufacturing to one based on technological innovation. It is thus important for the university to take the initiative in forming a research program that develops professionals trained with skills important for companies with a strong research base. Companies involved in innovation and whose attraction to the Island is fundamental for a shift in our economic base. My main interest in the University of Puerto Rico is to help during its transition into a commercialization focused research. The strategy I follow involves two general objectives: (1) The development of new courses in areas of technological relevance to this innovation incentive, and (2) The development of a collaborative research program with the objective of creating technologies with a high commercialization potential. The development of new courses in technologically relevant areas is the basis for the formation of a new breed of researcher. Our main focus is in the research, development and commercialization of new tools that fall into the fields of Regenerative Medicine, Cancer Therapeutics, Biosensors, and Computational Biology. Our interest in Regenerative Medicine focuses on bone regeneration using mesenchymal stem cells and multifunctional scaffolds. Our interest in Cancer Therapeutics involves the use of different types on ROS-producing core/shell nanoparticles for targeted therapies. We also develop electrochemical biosensors for the detection of analytes, DNA hybridization and transcription factors using nanostructured material-modified electrodes. Computational Biology involves the creation of computational tools for the integration of current biomedical knowledge and the generation of new knowledge through inference. Our focus is the elucidation of disease related mechanism using high-throughput microarray and qPCR data with probabilistic models and pathway analysis.
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©2002 Jaime E. Ramírez-Vick Last update on 10/18/2011 |
