I completed my Ph.D. training in molecular immunology before joining the surgical faculty at UM in 1995 with an appointment as the Director of Research for the Trauma Burn Center. In this role, I was asked to become one of the founding principal investigators (PI) for the multidisciplinary Crash Injury Research Engineering Network (CIREN), a government-industry-academia research consortium. I led the CIREN team at UM for 14 years and served 3 years as lead PI of the entire consortium. I also served as Associate Chairman of Surgery for Research during the realignment to the NIH Roadmap.

I endeavored to be a local role model for the NIH Roadmap’s integrated vision by generating opportunities in three main areas: new pathways to discovery, research teams of the future, and re-engineering the clinical research enterprise. Analytic morphomics is the term I created to describe the innovative high-throughput, highly automated, anatomically-indexed processing of 3D medical imaging data that I developed to support my interdisciplinary translational research. It is designed to take rapid advantage of advances in computation and medical imaging as well as the statistical techniques developed for genomic and proteomic analysis. Analytic morphomics also provides a strong platform for personalized/precision medical care.