Clinical Research Collaboration

If the bond between a doctoral candidate and their Principal Investigator (PI) is as permanent as marriage, academic collaboration, says Dr. Jason Reichenberg, is like dating. Dr. Reichenberg, a practicing physician at Seton Hospital and the Clinical Director of Dermatology for UT Physicians, has collaborated with Dr. James Tunnell, of the Biophotonics Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin, for seven years. Together, they have developed and tested various medical devices, including an optical probe for the detection of skin cancer for which they were recently awarded the South By Southwest Interactive Innovation SciFi No Longer award. On Friday, July 31^st, the BME CUReS Cancer REU students had the privilege of meeting these passionate individuals, learning what to expect from a partnership.

Like a romantic relationship, the core advice centered not around having identical expertise, but around sharing similar mindsets and goals. Bouncing sentences off of each other, Dr. Reichenberg discussed his previous attempts at collaboration, which ultimately failed due to, among other things, dissimilar expectations of timeframes, while Dr. Tunnell summarized, stating that the most successful collaborators had similar styles, levels of rank, and communication tendencies. Consequently, the members in a collaboration often, and ideally, have varied skillsets. In this instance, Dr. Tunnell performs the bulk of the device manipulations, delving from his PhD in light-based therapeutics, a Post-Doc in light-based cancer detection, and ten years of experience at UT Austin. Dr. Reichenberg, on the other hand, discusses the new procedure with patients and performs clinical trials, while together they must perfect their timing until the two worlds overlap.

These, however, are not the only two skillsets necessary in the competitive world of product production. Shattering the dreamers’ illusion, they told us that if you have a great idea, people do not necessarily come flocking. There is marketing, patenting, and a general sense of convincing that can become forgotten in pure academic research.

As a senior in high school, I completed Engineering Design and Development, a capstone course for the Project Lead the Way national pre-engineering program. In a team of three, we brainstormed problems, performed market research, drafted, and prototyped a partially- automated physical Sorry! game board. Since declaring my major as a biomedical engineer and beginning my experiences in academic research, however, I had never considered the parallels that that research could have to what I considered more industrialized engineering. The most rewarding research, however, is that which is also ultimately applicable in industry, leading to an eventual need for collaboration no matter the setting. And, unlike in school, the partnerships that we will form through our PIs and collaborators will hold meaning for life.

-Sarah Libring, Rutgers