West tapped to head IBB

West tapped to head IBB

Jennifer West, the Isabel C. Cameron Professor of Bioengineering and professor in chemical engineering, has been named director of Rice University’s Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering (IBB). She succeeds the late Fred Rudolph.

Jennifer West

“Jennifer West’s cutting-edge research in tissue engineering and nanobiotechnology has earned international acclaim, but her skills as a communicator and educator have been equally important in earning the respect of Rice’s life science community,” said Kathleen Matthews, dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences. “Those skills will serve Jennifer and IBB well as we continue to build relationships across science and engineering at Rice and with colleagues in the Texas Medical Center.”

IBB was established in 1986 by then-President George Rupp to foster cross-disciplinary research and education programs encompassing the biological, chemical and engineering disciplines. The institute serves as an administrative bridge between these disciplines, and members of the institute include faculty from the departments of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Bioengineering, Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering.

“We are seeking to engage a broader community in the exciting problems that bioscience offers for the coming decades,” West said. “There are many avenues for collaboration and connection open to IBB. As we forge new linkages, even more possibilities will emerge.”

One way to foster cross-disciplinary interaction is through the promotion of cross-disciplinary training. IBB has received funding for a number of such programs, including multiyear training grants from NASA, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Over the past 15 years, these training grants have supported more than 200 graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and undergraduates — the vast majority being graduate students.

IBB has been instrumental in developing new graduate and undergraduate programs in bioengineering, including the establishment of the Department of Bioengineering in 1995.

More recently, three centers have developed from the institute: the Center for Plant Science, the Bioinformatics Group (formed in conjunction with the Computer and Information Technology Institute) and the Center for Excellence in Tissue Engineering.

IBB sponsors two summer programs for high school students from the Science Academy of South Texas, HISD’s Milby High School and the YES College Preparatory School here in Houston.

“Fred Rudolph’s death 18 months ago came as an enormous blow to IBB,” Matthews said. “He was the moving force in developing the training program over the past 15 years, and he also established IBB’s summer programs for high school students.

“Jennifer took over as IBB’s training director under very difficult circumstances, and her leadership over the past year has allowed IBB to maintain the high level of training that the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and others have come to expect of our programs.”