The Texas-United Kingdom Collaborative was established in 2002 to foster collaborative, multi-investigator, multi-institutional and cross-disciplinary research in the nanosciences, information sciences and biosciences.  Its aim is to build new areas of research and capacity to generate new ideas, techniques, products and opportunities. 
The Collaborative harnesses the collective experience and ambitions of the top institutions in Texas and the UK.  Given its strengths in bioscience and engineering and rapidly growing expertise in nanotechnology, Swansea University holds one of these sought-after places and is therefore delighted to welcome four members of the panel over the coming week. 
Dr Malcolm Gillis is Chair of the Advisory Panel for the Collaborative and Former President of William Marsh Rice University.  He spent the first twenty-five years of his professional life teaching economics and bringing economic analysis to bear on important issues of public policy in nearly twenty countries, from the US and Canada to Ecuador, Colombia, Ghana and Indonesia.  His research and teaching activities fall into two broad classes of national and international issues: fiscal reform and environmental policy.  His record also involves substantial service to his profession, to governments, to foundations and hospitals. 
Dr Cliff Dasco is Executive Director of the Abramson Center for the Future of Health and is also Chair of General Internal Medicine at The Methodist Hospital in Houston.  He has received several awards for teaching excellence, including membership in Baylor’s Academy of Distinguished Educators. In addition, he has been medical director and senior medical advisor for numerous companies.  His current research interests include decisioning in health care; bioinformatics; patient education and empowerment; individualised health care; health economics; and biosensors for chronic disease management.
Dr Jim Calvin is Interim Vice President for Research at Texas A&M University.  One of a select few universities with land-grant, sea-grant and space-grant designations, Texas A&M is currently dedicating $500 million to new construction, including facilities for life sciences, physics, veterinary medicine and engineering.  Prior to his current appointment, he was professor and head of the Department of Statistics with secondary appointments in veterinary anatomy and public health; epidemiology and biostatistics; and toxicology.  His current research interests include linear models, multivariate variance components, biostatistics, measurement error, spatial models, and statistical process control.
Dr Mauro Ferrari is Director of the Center for NanoMedicine at Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine, Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas Health Science Center and President of the Alliance for NanoHealth.  He began his academic career in material science, civil engineering and bioengineering and has since spent time in the fields of biomedical engineering, internal medicine, mechanical engineering, health sciences technology and commercialisation. He has also served as Special Expert on Nanotechnology at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), leading in the formulation, refinement and approval of the NCI's Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer. This is currently the world's largest programme in medical nanotechnology. With this in mind, he is regarded a pioneer of the fields of BioMEMS, biomedical nanotechnology and multi-scale mathematics.

As part of these visits, Dr Gillis and Dr Ferarri will also be holding seminars at the Institute of Life Science, sharing their thoughts and experiences of topics so relevant to the work currently being undertaken at Swansea University.  Places at both seminars are limited so will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis.

Dr. Malcolm Gillis

“Perspectives on 21st Century Technology”

Friday 6th June at 9am
Institute of Life Science Seminar Room 1

Dr. Mauro Ferrari

“Rational Design of NanoMedicine”

Thursday 12th June at 2pm
Institute of Life Science Seminar Room 1

For more information on both the visits and the initiative in general, contact James Abbey – extension 2313 or email j.v.abbey@swansea.ac.uk