News Briefs

Medical School Accreditation

The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) has awarded The University of Texas Medical School at Houston a full eight-year continuance of its accreditation status.

“I think that a full eight-year accreditation is a wonderful accomplishment,” said Dean Stanley Schultz, M.D. “It is a compliment to the dedication and perseverance of our faculty, students and staff for having achieved the highest academic goals. During the past few years we have gone through a number of trying times – including Tropical Storm Allison – which drove some of our teaching activities from the Medical School, and there were financial stressors as well. Our members were able to overcome these obstacles and carry out their academic responsibilities flawlessly.

“I would like to thank Dr. Patricia Butler, associate dean for educational programs – and her staff – for their tireless efforts in organizing the self-study and the LCME site visit. My gratitude also goes out to the many members of the faculty, staff and student body who participated in this undertaking.”

3D Visualization

Thirteen leading undergraduate students from across the nation visited The University of Texas School of Health Information Sciences at Houston (SHIS) 3D Visualization Facility June 25.

Supported by competitive awards from the Undergraduate Research Training Program of the W. M. Keck Center for Computational and Structural Biology, the students are spending the summer in Houston to participate in computational biology research under the guidance of a faculty mentor. Trainees attend a specially tailored program of presentations to introduce them to a broad spectrum of the subdisciplines of computational biology (such as 3D electron crystallography, molecular dynamics or sequence analysis), workshops, and tours of research and clinical facilities in the Texas Medical Center.

The Keck Center is a cooperative project of the UT Health Science Center at Houston, Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, the University of Houston, the UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and the UT Medical Branch at Galveston.

The 3D Visualization Facility was recently built at SHIS by Keck postdoctoral fellow Stefan Birmanns, Ph.D., in the Laboratory for Structural Bioinformatics, directed by Willy Wriggers, Ph.D., assistant professor at SHIS.