Welcome from the Department
Head
 On July 1, 2001, OGI became the OGI School of Science & Engineering of the Oregon Health & Science University, through a faculty-driven merger with OHSU. The merger gave OGI the opportunity and resources to plan its future: created on January 1, 2003, the Department of Environmental and Biomolecular Systems is an essential component of that future.
The EBS department was established in recognition of the major role that the natural environment and environmental regulations increasingly play on human health. Creating EBS through the merger of two successful departments (Environmental Science and Engineering and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) reflects our perspective of environmental science as a field in major transition. This transition has been brought about both by transformative technology advances in sensing, modeling and information technologies, and by recent discoveries in molecular-level biology and biochemistry, particularly in the fields of genomics, proteomics and metabolomics.
In a short period, EBS became uniquely poised to advance the understanding and prediction of ecosystems: their function, natural variability, changes under climatic and anthropogenic stresses, and links to human health. Indeed, the creation of EBS has fostered an exciting blend of science, with cross-cutting initiatives in areas such as environmental observation and prediction, microbial frontiers and nanobiotechnology. These cross-cutting initiatives leverage foundation expertise in disciplines such as environmental science and engineering, biochemistry and molecular biology, general and applied microbiology and environmental information technology.
As traditional at OGI, the EBS educational programs are very research oriented. EBS PhD and MS students can choose among various degrees, some rooted in traditional disciplinary strengths and others decisively cross-cutting. We are making the growth of our student body a strategic priority. We seek to nearly double, to about 70, the number of our PhD and MS students by 2010. While we only offer graduate degrees, we are developing extensive summer and year-round undergraduate research opportunities, which will be launched in pilot form in 2006 and in earnest in 2007.
EBS is quickly gaining national recognition. Now in its third year of existence, the department is ranked 32 (40, in 2004) among U.S. environmental health science departments, according to the 2005 U.S. News and World Report survey. To add to our established strengths, we are engaged in a large faculty recruitment effort. I am delighted to introduce Prof. Margo Haygood and Prof. Brad Tebo as our two most recent hires. Overall, we have since 2003 hired five faculty, and are seeking to hire three additional faculty within the next year.
Antonio Baptista
EBS Department Head
January 2006
Vision Statement
- EBS addresses the physical, chemical and biological processes that occur naturally or result from the interaction of humans with the environment.
- We seek (i) fundamental understanding of processes at molecular, cellular and particle levels; (ii) integrative, process-based understanding of environmental systems; (iii) and effective integration of science in society's approaches to ecosystems health, human health and economic development.
- We emphasize innovative approaches that are possible through advances in biomolecular, genetic, computational and information sciences and technology.
- Our graduate education programs educate future leaders in academe, government and industry, by combining rigorous scientific training with innovative paradigms for cross-disciplinary problem solving.
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