VCOM View Vol 10 No 1

RESEARCH Review

Research Opportunities Expand to Louisiana and the Delta Region

W ith the establishment of a new Louisiana branch of VCOM, an entire region of additional research possibilities opens. For Pawel Michalak, PhD, Associate Dean for Biomedical Affairs and Research at VCOM-Louisiana, the new campus offers an opportunity to launch a completely new research program in the Delta region of Louisiana and the southern United States.

regulatory networks, and how it evolves over generations in response to environmental stress and intragenomic challenges, such as cancer,” said Michalak. When asked about his plans for the future of research at the new campus, Michalak provided some exciting insight. “We are

very excited to have established a new strategic partnership with the College of Pharmacy at ULM, which includes 3,255-square- feet of lab space dedicated to VCOM research activities, along with ample ancillary space and facilities,” he said. “We are looking forward to working together with the faculty at the Pharmacy College, new research collaborations and synergies.”

Michalak has been involved with research as part of the VCOM family since 2017. His research has focused on comparative genetics, genomics and bioinformatics, as they apply to his work with One Health and

At VCOM-Louisiana, Michalak and his research group would like to retool precision medicine and integrative genomics approaches toward emerging

“ We are very excited to have established a new strategic partnership with the College of Pharmacy at ULM.” Pawel Michalak, PhD Associate Dean for Biomedical Affairs and Research at VCOM-Louisiana

infectious diseases and their vectors. He explained that the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the profound public health and economic consequences caused by emerging infectious diseases, thus necessitating a new local and global mindset for public health preparedness.

global health challenges. “My team employed an integrative approach with a variety of molecular, computational and modeling techniques, including next generation sequencing of entire genomes, a rigorous understanding of how biocomplexity elaborates from genomes through gene

40

www.vcom.edu/view