Page 37 - Gates-AnnualReport-2019
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 CORE FACILITIES
  Near the end of 2019, the Directors of several Gates Center Core Facilities informed Gates Center leadership of their transition plans for 2020. Dr. Peter Koch, director of the Bioengineering Core and Dr. Maranke Koster, director of the Morphology and Phenotyping Core, announced their plans to accept offers from the Brody School of Medicine at Eastern Carolina University as Professor and Chair Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology (Peter) and Full Professor with Tenure (Maranke). We thank Peter and Maranke for ten outstanding years of service to the Gates Center as directors of these cores and wish them much success in their new positions.
After 27 years of service to the University, Karen Helm announced that she will be retiring in June 2020. Karen has served as director of the Flow Cytometry Core for the last 12 years. Because of the outstanding service that she has provided to so many members of the Gates Center, we decided to highlight her career and partnership with the Gates Center in this year’s annual report.
These transitions have provided an opportunity for Gates Center leadership to reassess the core facilities supported by the Center and make the following changes for 2020. Many of the services previously provided by the Bioengineering Core will be now be offered by the Stem Cell Biobank and Disease Modeling Core. Dr. Igor Kogut has agreed to direct the Morphology and Phenotyping Core and will expand the services provided by this Core (see next page). In the meantime, a search committee comprised of several stakeholders in the Flow Cytometry Core selected Lester Acosta as the new Core director effective July 1, 2020. Lester is currently the leader of the Core cell sorting staff and has worked under Karen Helm’s supervision for over 11 years. Although Lester has “big shoes to fill,” we look forward to working with him and anticipate that the Core will continue to provide outstanding service to Gates Center members as was the case under Karen’s leadership.
Following a presentation made to the Gates Advisory Board at its September meeting by Dr. Bruce Appel, Professor and Head, Section of Developmental Biology, Department of Pediatrics and Diane G. Wallach Chair of Pediatric Stem Cell Biology, Gates Center leadership made a decision to support the new Organoid and Tissue Modeling Core Facility established by Bruce and Dr. Peter Dempsey, Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics. Bruce made a strong argument for establishing this new core, which he and Peter believe will fill a void on campus and provide Gates Center members with opportunities to develop and utilize powerful human organoid and tissue models that will enhance their research capabilities and improve competitiveness for external grant funding (see next page).
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