The three institutions have jointly founded the Institute for Biomedical Imaging Science (IBIS). This institute will create interdisciplinary programs in the sciences of biomedical imaging and will foster joint training program to produce the next generation of basic and applied scientists. Biomedical imaging includes magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), CAT scans, and other high technologies ranging from molecular imaging to nanotechnology to computer science.

IBIS will bring together a critical mass of scientists from the three institutions to work toward developing new technologies and toward improving and extending existing ones. The combined expertise is expected to speed such advances and to increase the likelihood of receiving major grants for research and training.

“We are establishing a unique research environment, with as many as fifty scientists working together from the three institutions that are already aligned through academic affliations,” said Ioannis Kakadiaris, chair of the IBIS steering committee and a professor of computer science at UH. “We are thus positioning ourselves to be on the forefront of discoveries in biomedical imaging.”