Author: Olivia Breedlove

With the right certifications, they’ll become one in a billion

What gives orange juice its sunny zing?

Texas Woman’s University (TWU) flavor chemist Dr. Xiaofen Du explains it this way: “Generally, if you eat something, you identify three to four flavors. But if you get trained, you will pick up much more and become sensitive [to taste].”

It’s Du’s job to study the chemical breakdown of foods, finding the individual components that make up taste and aroma. Once known, she can replicate flavors in the lab to find ways to amplify natural flavors or create entirely new ones.

Her research skills spurred a partnership with Keurig Dr Pepper that resulted in the creation of TWU’s flavor chemistry program. Du, who joined TWU in 2017, is passing on her expertise to students in the school’s program, which started the same year she arrived at the university.
It’s the only flavor-chemistry-focused university food science program in the U.S., according to Shane Broughton, chair of TWU’s Nutrition and Food Sciences Department. The Denton university also has one of the few flavor chemists in Texas.

rior to coming to TWU, Du worked as a senior research scientist in China at Firmenich Aromatics, the world’s largest privately owned flavor and fragrance company, with numerous research and development awards to its name, including a Nobel Prize in chemistry.

“It’s not easy to learn,” Du says. “We deal with a lot of compounds you have to memorize. You have to connect those chemicals to real perceptions.”

Becoming a flavor chemist, or flavorist, requires rigorous training, including a seven-year apprenticeship. Broughton says there are currently only hundreds of certified flavorists in the world.
At TWU, students can earn a master’s degree in flavor chemistry or a Ph.D. in nutrition with an emphasis in flavor chemistry. It’s the background that students would need to eventually become certified flavorists if they choose.

Broughton says, “We want to make sure we are training them according to what the job-market needs are in this immediate environment.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

How partnership, not competition, is helping DFW’s financial and investment hub forge ahead

As the largest investment services firms began landing in DFW, competition on the self-proclaimed “Y’all Street” in Westlake, Texas, was inevitable. Financial and investment companies have historically fought for the same clients, real estate and talent.

Then change occurred in DFW.

Leaders from Fidelity, Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, JPMorgan Chase, TIAA and the Dallas Regional Chamber (DRC) converged to create the North Texas Investment Services Coalition (NTXISC), proving that working together can be more fruitful than battling each other. The coalition consists of the organizations’ market leaders, meeting in person or via phone, every month to work on shared, coalition-established goals for DFW investment services firms.

One of the largest areas of collaboration stemmed from the need for new talent and education partners to build the talent of existing team members. With facilitation from the DRC, the NTXISC began to meet with Tarrant County College (TCC) to develop a completely new credential focused on in-demand/high-growth entry-level investment service jobs. TCC brought in staff with a business background, an expertise in teaching “soft skills” and other professional skills while building curriculum with the NTXISC companies, ensuring every student who completes the course will be eligible to work for the companies and take the entry-level licensing exam. In the program, students will be exposed to the NTXISC member companies through site visits, internships, mentoring and guest lecturers. As TCC is building the program — slated for a late-2020 launch — the investment services firms are working with internal HR and hiring managers to influence and understand the program to give applicants with the credential a leg-up in the hiring process. The NTXISC/TCC credential showcases the leadership of both the financial/investment services industry and the higher education system, specifically when meeting the needs of talent in the region.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

J.C. Penney Co., OMNI, Oncor, PepsiCo. and others are supporting the launch of the first recognized urban work program in the country

When Paul Quinn College (PQC) President Michael Sorrell decided to convert the school’s football field into an urban farm, people thought he was crazy. The “WE over ME farm” has since set a national best-practice standard of taking institutional resources, listening to the needs of the community and supporting students — many of whom were suffering from food insecurity while enrolled.

Now the innovative leader has launched an initiative to become the first recognized urban work program in the country, a seal of approval that the Department of Education gave PQC in 2017, becoming the first Historically Black College or University (HBCU) to ever receive the recognition.

The PQC work program is one of a kind, in terms of community and corporate partnership. The model provides a low-cost, structured work program where students learn new skills and receive coaching and evaluation from industry experts. The program requires students to work 10 to 20 hours a week, reducing student tuition by almost $10,000 annually. Employers not only pay students for their work but also help fund tuition. Companies supporting the program include J.C. Penney Co., Oncor, Omni Hotels and PepsiCo. Other designated work colleges have some version of this program, but they lack the industry access that PQC students have in the DFW Region, because other schools are in mostly rural areas. Though PQC is located in southern Dallas, the program has expanded to other areas of the region, including Plano and Frisco, increasing student access and participation in diverse industries while providing growing diverse talent to the companies throughout the DFW Region.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

What happens when a bot acts not only as an assistant but a key team member?

Almost half of all existing jobs may be replaced by automation within the next 20 years, according to a study by researchers at Oxford University. How will humans interact with their bot counterparts? Which functions are best performed by artificial intelligence versus humans?

These are the questions being explored by George Siemens, executive director of the University of Texas at Arlington’s (UTA) Learning Innovation and Networked Knowledge (LINK) Research Lab.
Siemens and other researchers at UTA are working with a grant from Boeing to help the company understand future learning environments where new technologies such as bots, robots and artificial intelligence are active participants in teams, alongside workers.

“A lot of companies are facing a challenge to reskill their employees for an environment where they need to collaborate with technology, not just use it,” says Siemens. “This information will be important to all organizations.”

Smart bots like Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri are already being incorporated into social environments as both a resource and support in the daily lives of millions of people.

Siemens sees artificial intelligence working hand in hand with human customer service.

“You may find that in some areas a customer would much rather have an automated process and another area that may want a human process,” he says. “So, how do you intelligently make those decisions, as a corporate entity?”

Siemens says his research is fueled, in part, by data generated by students who work with UTA’s free online course offerings on its platform edX.

As artificial intelligence improves, these bots are expected to be working with employees in integrated teams, with the bots able to act not only as assistants but as key team members, providing analysis and input.

“It will be like human-plus, a resource with more capacity than only humans working as part of the team,” Siemens says. ”Whole new skill sets will be needed for employees.” Siemens and his team are developing a series of papers and reports for Boeing on how new knowledge and learning technologies are being developed and deployed at both universities and corporations.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

Amazon and Google are offering one of the nation’s first degrees in cloud computing for community colleges

Cloud-computing-related jobs include software engineers, software architects and data engineers — all growing professions in the workforce — and both Dallas College and the state of Texas recognize the earning potential for graduates. Amazon and Google have joined local initiatives to upskill Texas workers and students to meet industry needs.

In collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), beginning spring 2020, every community college and technical school in Texas will have the option to offer an associate of applied science degree in cloud computing.

The offering marks one of the nation’s first associate of applied science degrees in cloud computing offered by a community college. The two-year program is in response to what AWS and Dallas College recognized as a lack of trained talent in cloud computing across the state. Contemporary IT approaches say “cloud first,” but it became apparent to business, political and academic leaders that Texas’ emerging workforce did not yet reflect this shift. (“Cloud computing” is the delivery of on-demand computing services — from applications to storage and processing power — through a cloud services platform via the internet.)

“Our partnership with Amazon Web Services will introduce a wide array of students to the world of cloud computing, while equipping them with the education and skills necessary to prove successful in today’s workforce,” says Dallas College chancellor Dr. Joe May.

The program aligns with the needs of the industry and includes opportunities to earn industry-recognized credentials targeted at high-growth areas in the local economy. Students will be introduced to cloud computing technologies such as gaming, artificial intelligence and
medical applications.

Google Launches IT Cert Program

In January 2018, Google started an IT Support Professional Certificate program at the college district to prepare students and workers for entry-level roles in information technology support in six months without prior training.

In a visit to Dallas College El Centro campus, Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed the program will grow from 30 to 100 community colleges nationwide by the end of 2020. El Centro, an early adopter, began offering the program in fall 2018. The program features five modules designed to teach the key areas of knowledge needed for entry-level IT positions, including technology support and computer networking.

“Our goal is to make sure the opportunities created by technology are truly available for everyone,” Pichai says.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

BECAUSE LOWER-BACK PAIN IS UNIVERSAL

Turns out, space travel can be a real pain. In the lower back, more specifically.

Some Texas Woman’s University (TWU) kinesiology students tackled the problem and received national recognition in the process.

“According to NASA’s research, we found a high rate of occurrence of low-back pain in astronauts,” says Arianne Scheller, a TWU student who is now earning her Doctor of Physical Therapy degree at the university’s Houston campus. “In physical therapy, neuromuscular electric stimulation has been shown to help with pain in large muscle groups, so we looked at existing data and created a design that would effectively provide coverage with electrodes integrated into the garment.”

“The team created an undershirt that holds electrical simulators for muscle activation, which ultimately alleviates the pains micro-gravity can have on the lower back.”

The analysis and design by Scheller and her fellow teammates proved successful, and that took an entire room full of competing scientists and researchers by surprise, was entered in the Texas Space Grant Consortium Design Challenge for the first time and won.

How it Began

“In May 2017, a couple of NASA representatives visited Texas Woman’s University in Denton and suggested we look into joining the Texas Space Grant Consortium,” says Donna Scott Tilley, vice provost of research at TWU.

According to Tilley, the consortium offers numerous opportunities for undergraduate students, including scholarships, mentoring and competitions such as the design challenge. Tilley attended the consortium in the fall of 2017 and saw that the design challenge seemed to focus solely on engineering and technology.

She saw opportunity in looking at the human aspect of space travel.

“I gave [the representatives from the consortium and NASA]examples of how kinesiology and nutrition could play an important role [in] astronaut health,” she says. “They were intrigued and invited TWU to send a team to the [2018] competition.”

Yet, the team — consisting of the aforementioned Scheller, Alexis Quintana, Audra Roman, Charles Swieczkowski, Curt Neeld and Miranda Moore — would need to find a human-related space-travel problem.

Help from Above

Neeld, who received his undergraduate degree in 2019, and is pursuing his Doctor of Physical Therapy degree at TWU’s Dallas campus, recalls that the team’s NASA mentor, Dr. Baraquiel Reyna, played a key role in finding a problem that their team could best solve.

“Dr. Reyna … suggested that our team work to address issues listed on the NASA Human Research Program website,” Neeld recalls. “Our team then worked individually to determine the injuries with highest incidence listed in the Evidence Report of In-Flight Medical Conditions and potential methods of addressing them.”

According to the 2017 report, which documents injuries and illnesses reported during missions involving the U.S. space shuttle program, the Russian Mir program and the International Space Station, space travelers experienced back pain at a higher incident rate than nearly any other medical condition, except headaches.

“With the help of our team adviser, Dr. Rhett Rigby, our team utilized research and concepts accumulated to narrow our decision to a specific injury and the most plausible mechanisms of prevention, mitigation and/or treatment. This became the launch point for
our project,” Neeld says.

Identifying AND Solving a Problem in 6 Months Flat

Rigby recalls: “Over the summer [of 2018], the six students researched various health issues experienced by astronauts.

“Then, they developed a project objective and the approach to this problem. But rather than sticking just with the research and concept, they went all the way and developed the prototype garment — in just six months!”

To expedite the process, the team used 3D modeling software to create a design that relieves lower back pain for astronauts.

The team also received help from the rehabilitation community along the way, working with REACT Neuro-Rehab in Addison to find clients to test the garment. PlayMakar, a Southlake-based manufacturer of athletic training and recovery devices, provided the wireless Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) unit incorporated into a design of the shirt that was developed by another TWU team.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

MERGING SHARED WORKSPACES WITH SCIENCE

Shared workspaces — WeWork, Common Desk, Serendipity Labs, etc. — have become de rigueur in the modern economy.

The University of Texas at Dallas’ (UTD) Venture Development Center takes the phenomenon a step further, with a shared workspace that includes full working wet laboratories, complete with chemical catch tanks and fume hoods, as well as dry labs.

“I think [other co-working spaces] really missed the boat on specialized labs or other types of equipment that people just can’t get access to,” says Paul Nichols, executive director of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The center is part of the institute.

The center is also open to all UTD students and faculty, creating the potential for creative collisions.
“When you look at other universities and their corporate innovation and entrepreneurship program, it usually belongs to one college,” Nichols says. “We work with any department in the university. That’s a real strategic asset for the university. That’s where the center fits in; we have students and faculty across the campus who can use that space.”

The center has been the launch pad for numerous successful launches — among them, ophthalmic medical device maker Vital Art and Science LLC, which was purchased by Genentech, and Vigilant Labels, which developed a medication labeling system being used in more than 100 operating rooms in 14 hospitals.

More telling is the center’s rapidly expanding footprint since it opened in 2011: “We were at 10,000 square feet, with eight offices, and four labs,” says Kim Warren, manager of the center. “Then, we went to 15,000 square feet. Then, we added 10,000 square feet. After the next addition, we will be [at] 32,000 total square feet.”

Rent ranges between $125 per month and $1,000 per month.

But what in the world would an entrepreneur want with a wet or dry lab?

“Materials developers are developing their ‘goo’ — their word, not mine,” Warren says. “For the chemical [experimentation] processes. We have another [user] that’s biomedical, that uses the wet lab for the fume hood” [and chemical capture tanks.]

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

‘SNOW ON THE PRAIRIE’ IS NATIVE TO THE REGION AND FULL OF POTENTIAL

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 130 Americans die every day from opioid overdose. Researchers and graduate students at Texas Woman’s University (TWU), however, may have found a plant-based alternative that could result in saving hundreds of lives.

Euphorbia bicolor is the plant’s scientific name. It is better known as “Snow on the Prairie” and is native to the DFW Region, Oklahoma, parts of Arkansas and Louisiana and is the focus of research for TWU botanist Dr. Camelia Maier and TWU neuroscientist Dr. Dayna Averitt, alongside TWU alumna Dr. Paramita Basu. “It doesn’t grow anywhere else in the world,” says Maier. Maier is one of the first scientists to study the plant and says Native Americans used Snow on the Prairie for pain relief, which led her to study its effects for modern medicine.

TWU researchers have discovered a chemical inside the plant’s sap that, when used on tissue samples from animals, immediately stopped pain signals at the source of an injury — unlike opioids, which change the chemistry of the brain and can lead to addiction.

“We’re trying to target the signals as they make their way to the brain,” Averitt explains. “So if we can turn them off like a light switch for a long period of time, the brain doesn’t even know about it and you don’t have that pain.”

Don’t try to pull sap from the plant on your own, researchers warn the public, because the sap is toxic and cannot be ingested. If used for medical purposes, it would be injected into the site of the pain — directly into an aching back or a burned arm, for instance.

The TWU euphorbia bicolor research has been published but still faces challenges before clinical trials.

“We need to make sure it doesn’t hurt other cells,” Averitt said. “You’re harming nerve endings, which we want to do, but we want to make sure it isn’t acting as a toxin on other cells as well.
“You can’t help but look to the future and be excited, like maybe this could be something that could be a real breakthrough.”

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

UTD’s ATOM FABRICATION CENTER IS BLAZING THE TRAIL

Some might recall episodes of Star Trek that feature the use of “replicators,” which can create almost anything (even fried catfish), seemingly out of thin air, with the touch of a button.

Being able to construct objects at the atomic level would change everything.

That’s what Reza Moheimani and his team at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) Center for Atomically Precise Fabrication of Solid-State Quantum Devices are working toward: developing the tools and process for manipulating matter — in his case, silicon atoms — to allow for the construction of quantum computers, which could solve problems exponentially faster.

But before quantum computers can exist, people like Moheimani, who serves as a mechanical enigneering faculty member and James Von Ehr Distinguished Chair, must develop equipment that can construct extremely precise microscopic silicon circuits that convey minuscule levels of electrical current involved in quantum computing.

One of those in the private sector working with Moheimani is John N. Randall, president of Richardson-based Zyvex Labs, which specializes in nanotechnology. Randall — also a founding faculty member of the center — equates today’s computers with the vacuum-tube-operated radios of the 1920s and ‘30s.

To build a quantum silicon circuit, scientists start with a flat silicon surface, bathed in hydrogen atoms; then they use a device informally called a scanning/tunneling microscope to remove some hydrogen atoms from the surface of the silicon, replacing them with a different element — sulfur, for example.

“The basic [tunneling microscope] instrument hasn’t been changed since it was invented” more than 30 years ago, says Randall, an adjunct UTD faculty member.

“In some ways, it’s a [poor]microscope. It has horrible distortions. It is very unreliable. But money hasn’t gone into improving it. We’ve made some great strides” in improving the scope, he says, adding that Moheimani and his team have played a key role in those improvements.

While existing microscopes tunnel at the atomic level, the devices — and the atoms involved — lose stability during the process, Randall explains. Moheimani and his former Ph.D. student, Dr. Michael Ruppert, wrote an award-winning paper that spelled out a way to build a better-performing device with much greater precision.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

NEXTERA WIND RESEARCH INITIATIVE

Texas has long been the country’s capital for oil and gas. However, the state is experiencing a different kind of energy boom that has nothing to do with oil.

“People think Texas is all about oil and gas and ‘drill, baby, drill,’” says Michael Slattery, director of the Institute for Environmental Studies at Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth in a TCU publication. “But we now lead the country in wind energy by a long way.”

In 2019, Texas had the most installed wind power capacity in the United States with more than 27 gigawatts — far more than second-place Oklahoma and third-place Kansas, which have between six and eight gigawatts combined, according to the American Wind Energy Association Market Report.

With the growth in wind energy, TCU began a partnership with NextEra Energy Resources and Oxford University to study the social and economic impacts of wind farms. The researchers focused on how wind farms could be integrated into the existing power grid and how the turbines themselves impact the environment, including animal fatalities and aesthetics.

The chance for TCU students to conduct hands-on research in the field and work with scientists from all over the world melds perfectly with the university’s goals, says Chancellor Victor Boschini in TCU Magazine. “Our mission for students is to educate ethical leaders ideally suited for an interconnected, rapidly evolving, post 9-11 world, and this will help us do that,” he says.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE HOME OF SIX NOBEL LAUREATES

The University of Texas Southwestern (UT Southwestern) Medical Center has become the only academic medical center in the world to serve as home to six Nobel Laureates for one reason: Science is literally woven into the institution’s DNA.

“I wanted to develop a genetics program for the Department of Medicine,” says the late Dr. Donald Seldin, speaking in archival footage, dating back to the 1960s, not long after the school moved from its Army barracks-style campus. “There was very little clinical genetics in the United States. And we had an outstanding medical student — Joe Goldstein. I talked to him and tried to encourage him to go on a program of genetic training and to come back to the medical school and to set up a program here. He encouraged a colleague of his, Michael Brown, to join him.”

Of course, Brown vetted Seldin and the medical school staff before following Goldstein to what was then known as Southwestern Medical School.

“When I met Dr. Seldin and the faculty here, I was just amazed at how focused they are at the science of medicine,” recalls Michael Brown in a separate interview. “Everyone on the faculty was a scientist as well. The level of discussion, about patient problems and diseases, was at a much more sophisticated level than at Harvard Medical School. It’s pretty shocking, but it’s true.”

Since Brown and Goldstein won their Nobel Prizes in medicine in 1985, research spending at UT Southwestern has more than quadrupled, even adjusted by inflation. Between 1984 and 2018, faculty have spent more than $8.6 billion on research, largely fueled by the successes of its scientists.

Goldstein and Brown earned their Nobel honors through their breakthrough research on cholesterol metabolism. That work served as foundational for the launch of cholesterol-controlling statin drugs such as Lipitor, which is one the most commonly prescribed drugs in the world.

But Seldin did more than create a team of scientists who would help change the course of modern medicine: He created a place where intellectual curiosity and medical science would remain the thing, even after his passing in 2018.

Since the school’s founding in 1943, the institution’s faculty has received six Nobel Prizes and includes 22 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 members of the National Academy of Medicine and 15 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators. The faculty prides itself on its ability to translate its research quickly to new clinical treatments.

“I think a lot of people in Dallas who are the true giants in medicine, and myself, we’ve sort of planted our flag out there,” UT Southwestern lead researcher Eric Olson tells The Journal of Clinical Investigation, in the organization’s Conversations with Giants in Medicine video series. Olson and his team at UT Southwestern helped develop a way to use DNA-splicing technologies to disrupt a form of muscular dystrophy called Duchenne’s dystrophy, which afflicts 300,000 boys around the world. “And this is the place that we want to make great. And I’m proud of being a part of that.”

Olson co-founded Exonics Therapeutics, which was sold to Vertex Pharmaceuticals for $245 million, and future payments, which might add up to nearly $1 billion, if Exonics meets regulatory and clinical milestones.

Far-Reaching Impacts

The research by Olson and his 40-person team could cure up to 80% of all Duchenne’s cases; their treatment method is being tested on beagle dogs that suffer from the debilitating effects of Duchenne’s. The dogs “showed obvious signs of behavioral improvement,” Olson says in the 2019 issue of Southwestern Medical Perspectives magazine, “running, jumping. It was quite dramatic.”

Goldstein and Brown’s statin research impacts 200 million people annually, reducing the mortality rate of coronary heart disease by more than a quarter.

Work by Dr. Bruce A. Beutler — who won a Nobel Prize in 2011 — might lead to a cure for a variety of autoimmune diseases, such as gout, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. Autoimmune diseases afflict roughly 50 million Americans.

Beutler chose UT Southwestern twice in his career, first based on the school’s reputation for academic rigor and a second time for its support of its scientists.

“I had some choices [for my medical residency],” recalls Beutler, also speaking in the Conversations with Giants in Medicine documentary series. “I ranked UT Southwestern first, because I thought if I was going to do a residency, I thought I’d do a tough residency, where I would really be challenged, and I’d learn all I could about internal medicine and neurology in the shortest possible time.”

In 1983, after two years of residency at UT Southwestern, Beutler became a postdoctoral fellow and then worked as an assistant professor at Rockefeller University. At Rockefeller, he isolated a type of protein (called tumor necrosis factor, or TNF) that plays a crucial role in the existence of cells, such as proliferation, survival and death.

Beutler returned to UT Southwestern in 1986 to further that work as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and developed recombinant antibody inhibitors of TNF, which are now widely used in the treatment of hemophilia, rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. That research earned him and two of his colleagues the Nobel Prize in 2011, the same year he returned to UT Southwestern, after conducting further genetic research at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

“I was chair of a small department of genetics [at Scripps], but I had in mind to make a department on the genetics of immunity, to capitalize on the mutagenesis effort that we had started,” Beutler recalls in an interview with the Nobel organization. “But it didn’t seem possible at Scripps. There was no money to recruit faculty. I thought I didn’t want to preside over something that wouldn’t be successful. I began looking around … and received offers from several of them, and UT Southwestern was one of those. And it seemed to me to be the best scientifically and also, in terms of the plan I had in mind, the place with such a strong genetic heritage. Also, I was very familiar with it.”

UT Southwestern biochemist Zhijian “James” Chen — the 2019 recipient of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for discovering the cGAS enzyme, which launches the body’s immune defense against infections and cancer — put it this way: “To make these discoveries, sometimes, it takes a long time, it takes a lot of hard work, it requires patience, it requires a very supportive infrastructure. And UT Southwestern has all that.”

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

LEADERS AT UT SOUTHWESTERN PREDICT A GROUNDBREAKING DECADE FOR BRAIN SCIENCE

Speaking to legislators on the Texas House Committee on Public Health in 2017, Dr. Marc Diamond described the scene when he arrived at UT Southwestern: “When I arrived in 2014, I was given the opportunity to build a truly multidisciplinary research team to attack this problem of Alzheimer’s disease,” he says, “which I envisioned much like the Manhattan Project of World War II.”

Five short years later, Diamond is one of more than 2,000 faculty and staff at the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute, where they work to treat and find the root causes of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, epilepsy, and peripheral nerve injuries.

The institute launched in 2015 with a $36 million gift from Edith and Peter O’Donnell Jr.’s foundation and, in short order, joined Harvard, Yale and 22 other institutions as a clinical trial site in the Network for Excellence in Neuroscience Clinical Trials Center. Diamond was named director of the Center for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases at the institute.

Years before, Diamond and fellow researchers earned acclaim for research that identified how a particular protein — tau — triggers dementia occurring with Alzheimer’s disease. The condition afflicts more than 390,000 Texans and 5.8 million Americans. More specifically, Diamond’s lab was able to describe how tau proteins aggregate in one brain region and how they move like a virus, infecting healthy cells and triggering dementia.

Now he and others at the institute are working with peers to develop — at genetic, molecular and systemic levels — ways to predict if certain diseases will afflict healthy brains, how to prevent brain injury, ways to disrupt brain diseases, and methods for restoring brain function caused by injury or disease.

Leaders at UT Southwestern predict that the next decade will be as significant in brain science as the 1980s were for cardiovascular research with the discovery of statins — those cholesterol-lowering drugs that have helped tens of millions of people around the world — and led to UT Southwestern’s first two Nobel Prizes. They foresee the day when scientists in the region will earn similar recognition for unraveling the mysteries of the brain.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

AS THE INDUSTRY GROWS, THE NEED FOR TOP MEDICAL TALENT IS IMPERATIVE

Health care is a fast-growing, significant industry in the DFW Region.

In a 12-month period between 2013 and 2014, the health care industry and the industries that support it generated $52 billion in total revenue in the DFW economy, according to the most recent University of North Texas analysis available. That places health care among the largest industry sectors in the region, representing about 15% of the economic activity, according to the report.

Since 2014, the number of health-care-related jobs grew by about 13%, comprising a total of nearly 478,000 jobs as of January 2019, according to EMSI, a labor market analytics firm.

As the industry grows, the need for top medical talent is imperative. Two medical schools produce the bulk of physicians for the DFW Region; the region is also home to some of the top institutions producing world-class nurses, physical therapists and occupational therapists.

Nursing

DFW offers three highly regarded baccalaureate and graduate degree programs in nursing. Texas Woman’s University (TWU) has educated nurses for more than 65 years, with a Dallas medical district campus focused on health care practitioner academics and clinicals. The University of Texas at Arlington is the largest nursing program at a public university in the United States — it’s the fourth-largest producer of minority nurses. Texas Christian University is the only nursing program in the nation with a designated Oncology Emphasis track and offers numerous graduate programs in nursing. Dallas College provides key pipelines to the programs through Nursing Assistant degree programs and partnership with universities and hospital systems.

Physical Therapy (PT) and Occupational Therapy (OT)

The two medical centers in the DFW Region — UT Southwestern and the University of North Texas Health Science Center School of Health Professions — offer doctorate programs in physical therapy, educating students and hosting clinicals for PT students across the county.

The TWU School of Physical Therapy is a nationally recognized leader in professional and postprofessional physical therapy education and has ranked repeatedly among the top 10% of PT schools in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. TWU’s School of Occupational Therapy also is a national leader in the delivery of health care, according to U.S. News & World Report, and a network of more than 4,000 OT alumni make significant contributions to the OT profession by providing leadership in practice, education and research. Additional OT training can be found through Parker University, a predominantly chiropractic institution in Dallas.

Dallas College provides PT Assistant/Tech and OT Assistant/Tech credentials, filling the middle-skills workforce needs while creating a pipeline for future PT/OT leaders.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

NO BLOOD OR TEARS — JUST SWEAT

Diabetics must endure several daily, painful pinpricks to learn their glucose levels and monitor their blood sugar levels.

Dr. Shalini Prasad and her team of bioengineers at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) have developed a scientific workaround: a wearable sensor that measures glucose through tiny amounts
of human sweat.

“Fitness trackers that monitor heart rate and step count are very popular, but wearable, noninvasive biosensors would be extremely beneficial for managing diseases,” says Prasad, professor of bioengineering and department head at UTD.

To receive reliable glucose measurements, researchers designed the device to ensure low amounts of sweat could be used to “generate a strong enough signal,” as well as combat factors such as pH swings and varying acidity levels in sweat.

“Our modifications allow this material to entrap glucose oxidase molecules, which effectively amplifies the signal,” Prasad says. “We did it this way because we are thinking about possible commercialization — to make these, we need a fabrication process that is not complex.”

The amount of sweat measured amounts to less than three hundred-thousandths of an ounce.

“In our sensor mechanism, we use the same chemistry and enzymatic reactions that are incorporated into blood glucose testing strips,” Prasad says. “But in our design, we had to account for the low volume of ambient sweat that would be present in areas such as under a watch or wrist device or under a patch that lies next to the skin.”

The glucose monitoring technology is in the process of becoming commercially available; human subject testing is still ongoing, say UTD spokespeople.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

UT SOUTHWESTERN’S CANCER CENTER OFFERS CALCULABLE HOPE

For an institution to receive a Lead Academic Participating Site grant for cancer research, it has to demonstrate its ability to enroll high numbers of patients into National Clinical Trials Network trials and scientific leadership in the design and conduction of clinical trials.

Only 32 have done so in the U.S. Among those is the UT Southwestern Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center in Dallas.

North Texas cancer patients are benefiting as a result, based on a Dartmouth study. That study showed a 25% decrease in one-year mortality rates for patients diagnosed with lung, breast, colorectal and prostate cancer and treated at National Cancer Institute (NCI) care centers. Recipients of the NCI grants effectively become a part of the National Clinical Trials Network.

“Patients increasingly seek performance ratings to guide their decisions in health care,” wrote Dartmouth researchers, in their paper, which was published in 2013. “NCI centers appear to be benchmarks of cancer care for survival. Further investigations of the aspects of care at cancer centers that afford this benefit would assist other institutions in improving their care.”

The Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UT Southwestern Medical Center has 257 cancer clinical trials in 25 disease categories, according to its director, Dr. Carlos L. Arteaga. The Simmons Cancer Center involves two Specialized Program of Research Excellence Awards: one in lung cancer — one of the largest thoracic oncology efforts in the U.S. — and the other in kidney cancer, one of just two in the nation in that field.

The center receives nearly $460 million in funds from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, as well as funding from the National Institutes of Health and philanthropic funds.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

ITS RESEARCH COULD AFFECT NERVE REGENERATION, CANCER DIAGNOSIS AND MORE

Since the North Texas Genome Center opened in spring 2018, researchers have sequenced more than 100 DNA genomes, bringing science closer to heading off genetically related health conditions.

The center, a research and medical lynchpin at The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), features two NovaSeq6000 gene sequencing systems, which is the most powerful line from Illumina, the world-leader in genome sequencing technology. As one of the only a few centers in the central United States featuring NovaSeq6000s, the NTGC, a partnership between UTA and Texas A&M University, has the capacity to sequence more than 10,000 whole genomes annually.

In their genomic analysis, researchers have taken steps to identify rare genetic variants underlying human diseases, have identified genes and patterns of gene expression that may cause brain and nerve regeneration, and have identified a link between ethnicity-specific expression of regulatory genes that may be important for personalized cancer treatment.

“Going forward, we will develop the [genome center] as a hub to connect academic research with clinical medicine to catalyze discovery, innovative treatment, and personalized medicine that is relevant regionally and globally,” says Jon Weidanz, founding director of the center and UTA’s associate vice president of research. “Our work could break down barriers to personalized and precision medicine related to the acquisition and analysis of Big Data genomics.”

The Genome Center is working toward achieving accreditation under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments and the College of American Pathologists. Receiving those regulatory accreditations will allow the center to provide sequencing of patient genomes for clinical and diagnostic purposes and introduce new innovations into DFW health care while broadening the center’s existing research-based mission, according to Weidanz.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

IT COULD LEAD TO DOCTORS PRESCRIBING FEWER OPIOIDS

One in five adults in America suffers from chronic pain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yet modern medicine is far from solving the riddle of eliminating such pain, especially in the lower back.

“By far, the two most commonly used drugs for back pain are opioids and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and they both may be associated with problems,” says John Licciardone, DO, MS, MBA, professor of family medicine and the Richards-Cohen Distinguished Chair in Clinical Research at the University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC). “Based on the data we collect, we can look at the genes that control how these drugs are metabolized and predict who is at the greatest risk for side effects.”

Dr. Licciardone is leading a statewide effort to collect data for the PRECISION Pain Research Registry: the initiative that allows researchers at UNTHSC to analyze the characteristics of the DNA of people who suffer chronic lower-back pain. The DNA-collection initiative went statewide in May 2019 and had 650 participants as of November 2019.

On one end of the patient spectrum are people who metabolize opioids, such as codeine, very quickly, which puts them at high risk for serious side effects, such as respiratory depression. At the other end are people who are poor codeine metabolizers and are unlikely to experience pain relief.

The goal will be to decipher which patients are likelier to respond to specific drugs, such as opioids.

“If doctors have access to that information, it could lead them to prescribe fewer opioids, which can improve outcomes and reduce addiction,” Dr. Licciardone says. “So we are studying how we can we use the DNA information we have to tailor a particular treatment to an individual patient. That’s really the essence of precision medicine.”

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

FROM BUSINESS TO HUMANITIES TO ART, DATA IS DATA, AND IT’S POWERFUL

For decades, Tom Fomby has carried an obscure but powerful multitool in his intellectual toolbox. It lets him predict West Nile disease outbreaks. It let him determine that financial literacy can substantially reduce food insecurity (by up to 24%). It’s letting him determine if straightforward corporate scandals — as reported in the media — directly impact company stock prices.

Fomby didn’t want this multitool to remain obscure: He knew data analysis could answer a host of questions, regardless of the subject. It would be at least three decades before his fervor for data analysis would sweep across the SMU campus.

“Data is data,” says Fomby, a professor of economics at SMU. “You’ve got a toolbox. You can jump from doing economic research to [doing an analysis at] UT Southwestern. That training allows you to jump around and look at several things.”

Fomby had been “beating the drum” (as he puts it) to encourage fellow academics to adopt data analysis in their particular disciplines since 1984. Perhaps one of Fomby’s most noteworthy analyses involved the aforementioned West Nile study. In that study, he worked with researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center and Dallas County Health and Human Services to create a system to identify the best timing and locations to intervene and prevent infected mosquitoes from propagating. It might be notable that Fomby — an economist — hadn’t done any analysis involving public health data but for his adage: Data is data.

Now SMU’s supercomputers are being put to work on problems in a wide variety of subject areas — from mathematics to business (looking at firm response to mandated greenhouse gas disclosures)to physics (SMU physicists used earlier supercomputers to identify the Higgs boson particle).

SMU humanities professor Jo Guldi mined text from 100 years of British Parliamentary debates to get a better understanding of the history of eviction.

Dedman College seismologist Dr. Heather DeShon and fellow researchers are using SMU’s super-
computer — ManeFrame II — to study the triggers behind North Texas earthquakes, many of which have been tied to deep-well injection of wastewater from oil and gas production.

Fomby’s push toward data analysis at SMU spurred a 2017 task force that examined the prospects of how the research and teaching of data science could be expanded and coordinated at SMU.

“In the course of doing that task force, we were amazed by the breadth of activities, in data analytics,” says James E. Quick, SMU associate vice president for research, dean of graduate studies and professor of earth sciences James E. Quick. “From the business school to humanities to the arts.”

Having already secured one of the most powerful supercomputers in academia, SMU is now going about the work of establishing a center for high-performance computing, which will operate in conjunction with a data science institute.

The purpose is to facilitate access to high-performance computing, Quick says. “We’ve realized we’ve got a lot more going on with data. The data science institute’s goal is to get [the work] more coordinated — and more visible.”

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

TAMU - COMMERCE OFFERS THE FIRST COMPETENCY-BASED BACHELOR-LEVEL DEGREE PROGRAM

If you were a medic in the military for 10 years, why is it that you need to take a freshman-level Anatomy 101 course to complete a bachelor’s degree after transitioning from the workforce? Or maybe you have been a bookkeeper in a small business for years but never got around to finishing your college degree — should you have to take low-level accounting classes? These are the real-life examples of working adults who did not take the traditional path straight to college out of high school but hold relevant skills and competencies that transfer into core learning outcomes in higher education. The leadership at Texas A&M University-Commerce (TAMU – Commerce) saw the talent in these learners, as well as the barriers, which led it to create the Texas Affordable Baccalaureate program, a BAAS in Organizational Leadership — the first competency-based bachelor-level degree program. The program provides opportunities for students to receive credit for what they know and can do, allows students to accelerate completion of their degree, and because it is fully online, students are able to plan their study schedule around the rest of their work-day to complete the coursework. “It has been my miracle because it fits into what my life is now: a full-time employee, a wife, a mother …and now a student,” says student Maranda about the competency-based education program at TAMU – Commerce in a testimonial on its website.

From the success of the competency-based education (CBE) framework, TAMU – Commerce created the Institute for Competency-Based Education to provide formal resources and dedicated time for faculty to do research, host national CBE symposia and develop new competency-based education programs and practices.

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.

GIVEN THE RUSH TOWARD TECHNICAL AND DATA-DRIVEN SKILLS, WHAT’S TO BECOME OF CHAUCER?

“Many people make the mistake of thinking that a liberal arts degree will not help them in the business world,” writes Brian Sullivan, who received his bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) and his master’s degree in English literature at the University of North Texas (UNT).

Sullivan — director of design strategy at Southlake-based Sabre, a developer of technology for travel companies across the globe — could be considered a poster boy for the power of a liberal arts education in the tech economy.

“At the time (in the mid-1990s), I was studying at UNT,” he writes. “We did not have the explosion of smartphones, streaming services, same-day delivery services, app stores, and so on. We live in an attention economy, with so much data generated and sent out every minute of the day. It can be hard to organize, analyze, and distill what is important. How do you ignore the noise? How do you determine what’s important? Can you communicate this information quickly and efficiently?”

Sullivan gained those tools — analyzing, condensing and prioritizing reams of information into what’s important — over countless hours of reading, researching and, yes, thinking. Both at UNT and at UTA, where he studied political science.

“Corporate America is a real-time, everyday case study in political science,” he writes. “People have hidden agendas. They form tribes and alliances. You have to navigate
difficult conversations.”

It seems UNT boasts a plethora of liberal arts graduates, aside from Sullivan, who have gone on to make a global impact:

• • • Journalism grad Wende Zomnir launched a worldwide initiative for equal pay, education and fair treatment for women, funding seven nonprofits across the world in the process.
    • Marketing grad Kathleen Wayton harnessed the problem-solving skills she honed at UNT to become the chief information officer at Southwest Airlines.
    • Toni Reid — who is in charge of Amazon’s Alexa voice-driven app and its Echo devices — guided Alexa’s development, even including a “smart, humble, helpful, sometimes funny” personality, she told Variety in an interview that was published in June 2019.

“Toni Reid’s degree is in anthropology,” writes UNT Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Jennifer Evans-Cowley. “It was her ability to imagine how people could interact with technology that has allowed her to lead Amazon’s Alexa. Liberal arts majors are able to understand people and society in a way that can enable technological innovation to positively impact society.”

Realizing the humanities/tech connection, UNT and other universities are beginning to launch initiatives that combine liberal arts degrees with technical degrees to combine the best attributes of STEM and liberal arts educations, according to Evans-Cowley.

An analysis by Forbes cites the crucial role that liberal arts thinkers play in connecting products and services with consumers. Industry observers are increasingly pointing out the value of empathy, understanding of humanity, and perspectives that liberal arts graduates bring to tech.

“Chaucer is still relevant,” Evans-Cowley writes. “Our world is propelled by good storytellers.”

This article is part of the 2020 Higher Education Review Magazine.