"I see my role as helping make connections between researchers with deep insights into clinically meaningful challenges and those with expertise in the amazing range of tools our department can offer."
Bruce Rosen, MD, PhD
Bruce Rosen, MD, PhD, has many responsibilities as Vice Chair for Research in the Mass General Brigham Department of Radiology. The most important of these may be something at which he has always excelled—building bridges and making connections, all in the service of advancing biomedical imaging research for the betterment of human health.
In a recent conversation, Dr. Rosen discussed the myriad ways he and his team are planning to encourage interactions both within the department and across the institution. Here’s what he had to say.
Tell us about your role and the new structure in place to advance research across the department
The role of the Vice Chair for Research is to help coordinate and facilitate research activities within the department as well as collaborations with investigators in other departments and other institutions.
Today, with Mass General Brigham (MGB) integration, the biggest challenge is to encourage interactions between Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) campuses.
Some of what I’m doing is making one-on-one introductions, connecting people with common interests who may not know each other well. Some of it is looking for opportunities to create new programs that bridge the expertise of the two campuses.
To this end, we have recruited two co-directors to focus, respectively, on the basic science and the clinical translational aspects of research. Peter Caravan, PhD, is the former. Clare Tempany, MD, is the latter.
We have also brought together investigators from across the two campuses to help further this mission—by writing grants together, for example, and working together with our industrial partners at Siemens, GE, United Imaging, and others, presenting ourselves as a unified program.
Under Peter and Clare, we'll be searching for three associate directors in the areas of artificial intelligence, clinical translation and new technologies.
The six of us will work together to develop programs around each of the individual initiatives—and to also look for opportunities to connect the dots.
You mention looking for opportunities to create new programs bridging the expertise of Brigham and MGH researchers. Can you give us an example?
A good example is the 7T/ultra-high-field MRI program, where we’re combining the strengths of the two campuses to create something even stronger.
The MGH campus has two 7T research scanners — and in fact was the first to develop a clinical 7T platform, in collaboration with Siemens. The Brigham campus has a supported clinical 7T scanner.
Our goal is to bring these pieces together under one umbrella so we can both advance the technology and then more readily translate it in service of patient care.
Other examples include efforts in theranostics, ultrasound, and of course artificial intelligence (AI), where we have great strength across our campuses, but much to gain from working together.
What about potential collaborations across MGB?
I’m really excited about facilitating interactions between our research program and each of the three new institutes within MGB: the Neuroscience Institute, the Heart and Vascular Institute, and the Cancer Institute.
I see my role as helping make connections between researchers in our departmental programs and researchers within the institutes, matching investigators with deep insights into clinically meaningful challenges with those with expertise in the amazing range of tools our department can offer.
We’ll also look for opportunities to work together with the institutes to bring new technologies both into our department and into the institution as a whole that will have the greatest impact, as well as to partner to develop new technologies for specific basic biological or clinical applications.
Are there other ways in which you’re hoping to create connections?
We have recently started to have joint meetings with research faculty from the two campuses, and we're in the process of planning our first off-campus retreat for the faculty.
We have also created social events and other fun activities, like the Shark Tank initiative that we've had the past couple of years.
One of our biggest challenges, as is the case across MGB, is that the physical distances between campuses are a barrier to interaction. So we need to think of creative ways to get people in the same place and talking science together. Always open to new ideas here!
What else are you looking forward to in this role?
I always enjoy the opportunity to work one on one with individual investigators, especially with young investigators as they're writing their first sets of grants or manuscripts. It's one of the great pleasures of this job that I’ll now be able to do so with investigators across the department.
We have such a strong department, with an unmatched collection of research investigators doing such amazing things. I’m looking forward to learning what they're doing by listening to them talk about their next projects, their next papers or grants, and doing what I can to help them be successful.
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