Finalist for founding director of Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute to present Monday
Michael J. Friedlander, the Wilhelmina Robertson Professor and chair of the Department of Neuroscience at the Baylor College of Medicine, will present a seminar on Monday, Oct. 5, at 10:15 a.m. on Virginia Tech's main campus in the Virginia Bioinformatics Conference Center on Washington Street.
Friedlander is a finalist for founding director of the research institute with the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute (VTC), located in Roanoke, Va.
His seminar will be on "Dynamics of functional synaptic connectivity in the cerebral cortex," and he will also briefly present his vision for the VTC partnership.
Friedlander was founding chair of neurobiology at the University of Alabama (UAB) at Birmingham School of Medicine, and director of the Civitan International Research Center, the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute, and the UAB Mental Retardation Research Center. He completed his undergraduate degree in biology at Florida State University, received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, and completed his NIH post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Friedlander enjoys an international reputation for research in the area of neuroscience, having received more than 40 extramurally funded projects to support his research activities over the past several decades. He currently serves on the editorial boards of four different scientific journals and has held national and university leadership positions.
"The research institute director will provide leadership for the institute, with responsibility for development of a research strategy, recruitment of research teams, development of collaborative translational research programs, and integration of the institute with existing Virginia Tech research programs, the new school of medicine, and with Carilion Clinic," said Dennis Dean, acting director.
VTC joins the basic science, life science, bioinformatics, and engineering strengths of Virginia Tech with the medical practice and medical education experience of Carilion Clinic. The research institute creates a bridge between basic science research at Virginia Tech and clinical expertise at Carilion Clinic and increases translational research opportunities for both partners. VTC is located in Roanoke adjacent to Carilion Clinic, in a new biomedical health sciences campus. Learn more online.
