UAMS Physiologist Will Lead Arkansas Biosciences Institute

JULY 29, 2002 | A UAMS scientist who has led efforts to bring high-tech research capability to campuses across Arkansas is the new director of the Arkansas Biosciences Institute (ABI).

Lawrence E. Cornett, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics in the College of Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), succeeds S. Michael Owens, Ph.D., who was the first director of the institute.

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The Board of Directors of the ABI appointed Dr. Cornett Friday at a meeting at the Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, part of the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.

"The ABI is becoming an important catalyst for

"I am honored by this appointment and look forward to working with my colleagues at all of the ABI member institutions," Dr. Cornett said yesterday.

Dr. Cornett will immediately begin directing the institute, an agricultural and medical research consortium dedicated to improving the health of Arkansans. Meanwhile, Dr. Owens will devote full time to his own research projects. He currently has approximately $9 million in federal funding to develop therapeutic medicines for persons with substance abuse problems.
The ABI receives its funding from Arkansas's share of the nationwide tobacco settlement, thanks to the voters' endorsement of the proposed Tobacco Settlement Proceeds Act by 65 percent in a referendum Nov. 7, 2000. The institute allocates research funds to its five institutional members: Arkansas Children's Hospital (ACH); Arkansas State University (ASU); the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture; the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville (UAF); and UAMS.

"Larry Cornett is the ideal scientist to support the next phase of the biosciences institute," Dr. Owens said yesterday. "He is a scientist's scientist - and in leading the effort to establish the Arkansas Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network (BRIN), he had already become familiar with the strengths and challenges of Arkansas's scientific research programs."

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded $6 million to UAMS last year to form the BRIN, a network of high-powered research laboratories that is expected to help expand Arkansas's biotechnology workforce, in collaboration with UAF and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Dr. Cornett is director of the BRIN.

Dr. Cornett earned the Ph.D. in physiology from the University of California, Davis, and was a postdoctoral fellow in reproductive endocrinology and cardiovascular physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. He joined the UAMS faculty in 1980. He has been very active as a teacher and advisor to graduate students and was the major professor for scientists now working at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Harvard University, and Vanderbilt University, among other research institutions. He has been instrumental in obtaining approximately $4.6 million in research funding at UAMS. Among his many honors, Dr. Cornett was an invited symposium speaker at the Seventh International Symposium on Avian Endocrinology at Varanasi, India, in 2000.

The ABI board also heard presentations from two scientists who have received research funding from the institute: Luke Howard, Ph.D., who is studying antioxidant capacity and phenolic content of spinach and blueberries, and Brad Murphy, Ph.D., who is studying the potential use of crop plants in the manufacture of pharmaceutical proteins. Both scientists are with UAF.

Links on This Page

Department: http://www.uams.edu/physiology/phystitle.htm
Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network: http://brin.uams.edu/summer.htm
Tobacco Funds: http://www.uams.edu/today/2002/042502/ABI.htm
UAMS, Partners: http://www.uams.edu/today/092701/partners.htm

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07/29/02