“The best lesson of COVID-19 may be the impact of its urgency on research. If we could mobilize this type of urgency for some other diseases, we’d be able to accelerate the pace of developing life-saving therapies and other discoveries. The impact of COVID-19 on research has been fascinating. It really brought the world’s attention back to our work. So many take for granted how important research is for both medicine and humanity.” - Vibha Lama, MD, MS. Learn more about Dr. Lama.
Meet Our Vice Chair for Basic & Translational Research
Slowing Down & Accelerating Research
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, all of our research labs closed except for very essential activities. With new protocols in place, they are all back up and running. While these efforts have been successful at safely getting our teams back to their research, it has been a setback for many. On the other end of the spectrum, it also inspired many investigators to pursue new ideas to address COVID-19 and conduct research work in a shorter amount of time.
Building Collaborative Teams
At Michigan Medicine, we have many researchers who are doing cutting-edge work in different areas who may not know about each other’s work. We would like to encourage more of these individuals to get team funding and work collectively on projects to promote more impactful research.
One avenue for researchers to interact and see what others are working on is the Department of Internal Medicine Annual Research Symposium. We held successful virtual symposiums in 2021 and 2022, with a record number of abstract submissions and thematic mini-symposia featuring researchers across divisions and research arenas.
We have also introduced a new thematic multi-speaker format research conference, Internal Medicine Research Rounds, which is held quarterly. This disease-based discovery science forum will allow us to populate ideas across divisions, increase interaction among investigators, and hopefully lead to new collaborations across basic science departments.
