I was fortunate on Friday to attend Masterminds at the Ohio Union in the center of The Ohio State University campus. I was the guest of Cindy Hilsheimer, founder and managing principal of BeecherHill, a retained executive search firm in Columbus. Cindy and I are board colleagues at at OCLC, Inc. in nearby Dublin, Ohio. Masterminds is a series of short, engaging talks made by brilliant faculty who hold endowed positions at Ohio State. The event is related to the philanthropic development program of the university. Four speakers presented cutting-edge research, discoveries, and innovative ideas.
Casey W. Hoy, PhD is a professor in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. He is the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Endowed Chair in Agricultural Ecosystems Management, and Faculty Director of the Initiative for Food and AgriCultural Transformation. He pointed out the world can produce enough food to provide a healthy diet to the entire world’s population, but one out of nine are seriously underfed. His talk, “A Systems Approach to Food Security” described a large collaboration across multiple disciplines at the university to develop models to produce food nearer the source of the need.
Timothy M. Pawlik, MD, PhD, MPH is a professor in the College of Medicine, Urban Meyer III and Shelley Meyer Chair for Cancer Research, and Chair of the Department of Surgery in the College of Medicine. His talk was about treating the sick as people, not as patients. He described the gap between what a provider things is realistic relative to curing a person and the perception and expectation of the person. “Reframing Hope for Patient Centered Outcomes” was an enlightening vision of a very complex and difficult topic.
Caroline S. Wagner, PhD is a professor in the John Glenn College of Public AffairsAmbassador Milton A. and Roslyn Z. Wolf Chair in International Affairs. The focus of “The Global Network of Science” was how basic science research often begins by a researcher who immigrated from another country, and then the researcher reached back into their country of origin to collaborate. The result is a massive global network of communications. The alarming statistic she showed is the rate at which China is gaining a strong foothold on research with nearly 30% of scientific papers being published there. They are about to surpass the amount of research published by the United States.
Jianjie Ma, PhD is a professor and researcher in the College of Medicine and is the Karl P. Klassen Chair of Thoracic Surgery. His talk was “Regenerative Medicine”, a topic I have written a number of stories about the topic here. Dr. Ma talked about MG53, also known as tripartite motif or TRIM. The newly discovered protein can be injected into a cell and it then grows. After cell growth, the result is sliced and diced into a powder and then a salve, which has shown it can repair heart, skeletal muscle, and, other tissues. He showed some incredible before and after pictures after MG53 was applied. He referred to MG53 as pixie dust with amazing healing power. More research is underway but the potential looks very promising.
The tag line for Masterminds is Short talks, Big ideas. That was certainly the case for all four talks. I feel lucky to have been able to learn a lot on Friday. I was hoping to report on first reactions with the iPhone Xs Max and the Series 4 Watch. Unfortunately, the iPhone arrived at home in Connecticut while I am in Ohio. The Watch was erroneously shipped to my Florida address. Stay tuned.
