Welcome to the Integrated Biomedical Science Graduate Program (IBGP) at the Ohio State University (OSU) Medical Center. We are delighted that you have chosen to browse our website to gain more information about our program. Our program would like to share with you a vision of how all scientists will one day embrace the interdisciplinary nature of biomedical research, and how our graduate program can help you to attain this vision for the future.

The IBGP is designed to allow graduate students to build a solid foundation for their professional life as an interdisciplinary researcher. A program of study has been designed that provides you with the knowledge and experience in a number of different disciplines to better prepare you to imagine solutions to the present and future biomedical problems that others cannot.

At first, many denied that such a program could be designed and implemented because it would tear down traditional departmental walls and training traditions. But then, the argument shifted to one that the organ systems were too complicated to study together, particularly in the short term. But, the researchers at the OSU Medical Center and Children's Hospital of Columbus began to organize within a framework for action. The IBGP was founded and was led by the first Director, Dr. Allan Yates to initiate an effort to promote interdisciplinary training at the medical center. Soon, it became clear that we had the necessary faculty and leaders of the departments, institutes, and College of Medicine with the foresight necessary to begin such an endeavor. And the rest is now history.

Reaching for this vision was not easy or immediately attainable, but attaining it through a lot of hard work and imagination has proved to be clinically valuable by helping our students to design experiments and interpret results that involve complex physiological interrelationships. Eleanor Roosevelt put it best when she said, “The future is literally in our hands to mold as we like. But we cannot wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow is now.” We must invest now in far-reaching visions that will be best for biomedical research as a whole, instead of the best for a given individual or philosophy. It is now that we need to start thinking about the changes we have to make in order to protect the climate of interdisciplinary research tomorrow. Our program's commitment to interdisciplinary research, along with our enviable spirit of cooperation between the School of Biomedical Sciences and the College of Medicine, have provided our students with a strong tomorrow in which they will face fewer obstacles and more possibilities in their research career choices. We hope that you will continue to read on about our graduate program and consider joining us in trying to mold the future of biomedical science research .

Virginia M. Sanders, Ph.D. Director

R. Thomas Boyd, Ph.D. Associate Director