MSU Biomedical Research & Informatics Center

Michigan State University (MSU) established the Data Coordinating Center (DCC) in response to recommendations from the Clinical Infrastructure subcommittee of the Biomedical Research Advisory Committee (BRAC). The primary mission of the DCC was to enhance the quality and efficiency of clinical research by MSU investigators in the Colleges of Human Medicine, Natural Sciences, Nursing, Osteopathic Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. The DCC was expected to provide cutting edge support for research and collaboration, in order to increase federal grant funding opportunities at MSU.

 In July 2001, Michigan State University recruited M. Hossein Rahbar, PhD, as the founding director of the DCC. Prior to coming to MSU, Dr. Rahbar was instrumental in setting up the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Department of Community Health Sciences (CHS) at the Aga Khan University (AKU) in Karachi, Pakistan. Dr. Rahbar established an organizational framework for the DCC including the three major functional areas of Biostatistics, Data Management, Clinical Epidemiology/Clinical Trials. During 2001-2005, about 70 projects received various types of assistance including study design, data collection and management plans, design and development of databases, and statistical analysis. In 2004, Dr. Rahbar was successful in obtaining funding for a national data coordinating center for a multi-site study of autism sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). In 2005, he left the DCC to focus on his role as principal investigator for the autism and other NIH funded research projects.

 Philip Reed, PhD, MSc, was appointed as the second director of the DCC in June 2005.  The unit was moved organizationally to the Office for Clinical Research, established by the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies. At this time, the name was changed to the Biomedical Research & Informatics Center (BRIC). This reorganization was a reflection of MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon’s initiative to refocus MSU research infrastructure to achieve an expanding MSU National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant portfolio. Under Dr. Reed’s leadership, BRIC embarked on a major development project to build a state-of-the-art capability in research informatics. Dr. Reed is an experienced PhD psychologist with many years of senior-level executive and administrative experience in manufacturing and management consulting. This experience has been an asset in the reorganization of BRIC to include a major software development capability. In the three years immediately preceding his appointment as full-time BRIC director, Dr. Reed completed a two-year NIH/NIDA-supported postdoctoral fellowship in the Johns Hopkins drug dependence epidemiology program, and earned his Master of Science degree in Epidemiology at MSU.

 The BRIC mission has two components; (1) to support the development of NIH and other federally funded research by MSU investigators; and (2) to support the execution of large scale studies of human subjects by providing high-level, multifaceted research informatics solutions. A crucial component in the strategy for serving this mission was the recruitment of Joseph Bonner, M.S., a leading expert in research informatics application development. Prior to joining BRIC, Mr. Bonner had extensive research informatics development experience in research settings spanning the pharmaceutical industry (Parke-Davis R&D) and academic biomedical research (University of Michigan). As manager of the BRIC informatics core, Mr. Bonner has been the principal architect in the development of RIX, BRIC’s proprietary database application. He has also directed the integration of RIX with two other important informatics capabilities, BRIC’s Longitudinal Study Engine (LSE) and the automated voice response (AVR) research system.