For nearly 40 years, the Harvard-MIT division of Health Sciences and Technology has worked to bring innovations in non-medical fields such as information technology, engineering and materials science to the patient bedside and to clinical research. The catchword for the program is convergence with faculty focusing on fostering collaboration among researchers from disparate fields. Now, HST through a unique program aimed at training a new class of highly versatile health professional, is taking its model to India. The move could lead to new treatments and technologies.

For Reg Kelly, the director of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, or QB3, research breakthroughs are not enough. Kelly notes that Q2’s mandate is not only to improve public health, but California’s economic well being as well. To that end, QB3 has aggressively pursued relationships with industry, sought to find sources of funding for faculty created start-ups, and even created incubator space for new companies within its headquarters on the Mission Bay campus of the University of California, San Francisco to see that researchers’ discoveries get translated into products that can ultimately benefit public health.

No one would ever confuse William Boyd with Steve Austin, the iconic and bionic hero of the 1970’s TV series the six million dollar man. Boyd, who spent his career at a Nabisco bakery in Houston mixing dough to make Ritz Crackers, though, may become something of a bionic man himself. In 1979, Boyd developed retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic condition that causes a degeneration of the natural photoreceptors that line the retina in the back of the eye. Thirty years after his diagnosis, Boyd may be one of the first patients implanted with an artificial retina in the hopes of restoring limited sight to him.