MIT announced the launch of a new, campus-wide initiative to strengthen and expand interdisciplinary collaborations to take on some of the world’s most pressing health challenges. MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS) will draw on the Institute’s strengths in life sciences, artificial intelligence, chemical and biological engineering, and other fields to accelerate progress in improving patient care.
In addition to remarks from MIT President Sally Kornbluth and Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, the launch event featured a keynote address from Phillip Sharp and presentations by more than a dozen other Koch Institute members and faculty alumni.
In fact, the Koch Institute has been cited by many involved with the planning and development of MIT HEALS as a precedent-setting example for the new initiative in terms of both its research and translational success and its organizational model. Moreover, former director Tyler Jacks co-chaired the MIT faculty committee behind HEALS. He and his colleagues found that additional infrastructure and dedicated funding mechanisms were the most common faculty requests for supports to further expand collaborative research at MIT, a number of which have also been developed as part of the launch.