MLSC President and CEO Kirk Taylor, MD and the MLSC team had the privilege of engaging UMass Amherst leaders and faculty during a wide-ranging tour and discussion on how the campus is leveraging the power of research and innovation to create opportunities for students and improve lives now and for future generations.
The visit included a tour of the campus’ Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS). IALS, as a broad interdisciplinary institute, serves as a catalyst and resource for translational R&D activities, manages centralized core facilities and “collaboratories” for UMass Amherst, and strengthens campus venture mentoring and start-up activities. The MLSC has invested more than $105 million toward these efforts, including a $95 million investment to help launch IALS as a critical resource for UMass’ innovation engine.
IALS has served as a campus and regional catalyst for 260 translational faculty, 30 core equipment facilities, 300 industry collaborations, dozens of startups, and contributed to student engagement, experiential learning, and success-skills training of students.
The MLSC has funded 462 internships for UMass Amherst students since 2009. Moreover, approximately $250,000 in MLSC funding has been deployed to UMass Amherst to support wages and other costs for 104 internships for high school students across multiple research labs since 2017.