Nov 25, 2009
Health Sciences Campus, Kochi
 

Chancellor Amma is currently in Michigan, on the last leg of her 2-month Europe-US tour. Senior administrators from Amrita’s Health Sciences campus in Kochi, who are also on tour with Amma, recently visited the University of Michigan’s Medical School (UMMS) in Ann Arbor.
 

Like the Amrita School of Medicine, UMMS offers M.D. programs, post-M.D. residency and fellowship programs, Ph.D. and post-Ph.D. training in basic sciences. There are 1,600 faculty, all physicians and over 600 medical students, 1,000 interns and residents, 1000 graduate students including postdoctoral research fellows. It is a large school.
 

“It appears that there are many ways in which Amrita and UMMS could engage,” stated Karen Sneha Moawad, Coordinator of International Collaborations for the Amrita Hospital, after the meeting. “UM has many opportunities for faculty to apply for internal seed grants that can lead to future funding.”
 

Collaboration will center around student projects also. Amrita students will be encouraged to participate in the Summer Biomedical Research Program at UM that would provide them with funding. Or they could apply for student grants for clinical rotations. An MoU could possibly be signed for student exchange.
 

The visiting Amrita team also included Dr. Shanti Nair, Director of the Amrita Center for Nanosciences in Kochi. “The Michigan Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine and Biological Sciences provides the potential for high-level scientific collaboration that could be mutually beneficial to both UMMS and Amrita,” he stated.
 

The Department of Anesthesiology / Sleep Medicine at UMMS, which has the largest perioperative sleep study database in the world, could provide a launch point for clinical research.
 

The team also met with Cheryl Moyer, Research Director and Managing Director, Global Reach at UMMS and Kate Durand, Program Manager. “We extended an invitation to them to visit Amrita to further explore these possibilities,” Karen added.