Montgomery County Executive Joins Institute Leadership and Industry Partners for Tour
The University of Maryland Institute for Health Computing (UM-IHC) hosted Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich on Tuesday, April 23, 2024, in its new North Bethesda offices. Elrich and his team were joined by representatives from federal agency National Institutes of Health (NIH) and companies Kaiser Permanente, US Pharmacopeia and ThermoFisher.
Positioned at the heart of the third-largest life science cluster in the United States, UM-IHC is the first step in an ambitious and visionary project to transform North Bethesda into a national epicenter of computational science-enabled biomedical research, population health and precision medicine to improve the health of the citizens of Maryland and beyond. The visit further illustrated the power of collaboration and demonstrated the synergies that exist between federal agencies, life science companies like those mentioned above and the UM-IHC.
Following a tour of the space, Dean Amitabh Varshney and UM-IHC Co-Executive Director Bradley A. Maron shared an update on UM-IHC’s progress in several areas including hiring, industry and government outreach, and research.
The UM-IHC’s new state-of-the-art facility features more than 27,000 square feet of space and will serve as IHC’s home until a planned $200 million facility is completed at the North Bethesda Metro Station. Both UM-IHC’s current and future locations include space for federal science and industry partners to improve collaboration within the bioscience community in Montgomery County.
Since its launch in November 2022, the UM-IHC established six core research areas:
Applied Artificial Intelligence
Bioinformatics
Immersive Visualization
Therapeutic Target Discovery
Population and Community Health
Real-world Evidence and Adaptive Clinical Trials
Highlights of the tour included virtual reality demos for the Montgomery County team and meet and greets with Elrich and students, IHC faculty, staff, and both NIH and Kaiser Permanente, US Pharmacopeia, and ThermoFisher company.
