Background

The Training and Experiential Learning in Biomedical Informatics (TExBioMed) Summer Institute is intentionally designed to provide research opportunities to all students but will focus on underrepresented groups in biomedical informatics, health informatics, public health informatics, and related fields and strengthen, expand, and diversify the nation’s capable workforce to meet the advances of the 21st Century. The next generation of multidisciplinary investigators will require foundational training and experience in both the life and physical sciences and computational, mathematical, and engineering disciplines to tackle increasingly complex problems that impact our health.

TExBioMed, a research education initiative led by Dr. Gabriela Wilson, the Co-Director of the Multi-Interprofessional Center for Health Informatics (MICHI) at UTA, will recruit and immerse talented undergraduate students in a training environment that will expose them to the current state-of-the-art in biomedical informatics, health and public health informatics, and data science.  TEXBioMed faculty members span four participating colleges and have complementary expertise in genomics, bioinformatics, health informatics, public health informatics, bioengineering, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and computer science.

TExBioMed is focused on increasingly important and various approaches that foster data-driven discovery in the biomedical and clinical health sciences to predict and diagnose disease, develop targeted therapies, and personalize health and wellness plans more equitably and efficiently. The program emphasizes the importance of multidisciplinary research as an increasingly critical approach to answering biological questions while addressing health equity.

The ultimate goal is to motivate TExBioMed student participants to pursue careers in bioinformatics, health informatics, public health informatics, data science, and other STEM disciplines and increase the talent pool to fulfill the needs of the nation’s current and future workforce.

Funding

The TexBioMed Summer Institute is supported by the National Library Of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R25LM014215.