This summer, the University of Texas Medical Branch and Texas A&M Galveston are teaming up to help students in the field of life sciences propel the good ideas rattling around in their heads into creative solutions that make a real difference in people’s lives.

In a new study, researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch show that a new vaccine developed to fight Lassa Virus, a pathogen that causes Lassa fever, provides rapid protection against the deadly pathogen.

Surgeons at the University of Texas Medical Branch’s Clear Lake Hospital recently combined two different neuroscience procedures to treat a patient’s rare condition. The innovative and life-saving procedure was a first for UTMB.

A new University of Texas Medical Branch study links COVID-19 restrictions to poor mental health in adolescents. “While it was necessary to prevent the pre-vaccine spread of COVID-19, removing children from school was not without consequences,” said Dr. Jeff Temple, Vice Dean for research at UTMB’s School of Nursing and the director of the Center for Violence Prevention. Temple is the lead author of the study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

The Galveston Healing Arts Orchestra will perform a classical concert at 7 p.m. June 24 in the Levin Hall Dining Room on the Galveston campus. The orchestra members include faculty, staff and students at UTMB.

Pew Charitable Trusts announced that Noe Baruch Torres, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, was selected as a 2022 Pew Latin American Fellows Program in the Biomedical Sciences.

Dr. Neil Mehta, an associate professor in epidemiology in the School of Public and Population Health at UTMB, is a guest editor of the special supplemental issue, Why is Health in the United States Continuing to Lag Behind? “There’s no simple answer,” Mehta said. “The issue touches on the many complicated factors with a focus on social and behavioral factors.”

The University of Texas Medical Branch partners with UT El Paso on deep learning approach to improving lung region segmentation accuracy in chest x-ray images. The model is one of the first products created in partnership leveraging medical expertise at UTMB and computational expertise with machine learning and artificial intelligence at UT El Paso.

Thanks to a $56 million grant, the University of Texas Medical Branch and global health care company Novartis will enhance their work together to discover drugs to fight off the next pandemic. The grant comes from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and is one of nine such grants awarded by NIAID to establish Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Centers for Pathogens of Pandemic Concern.

The unveiling of two new Zen Rooms—one on the Galveston Campus and another on UTMB's League City Campus—coincided with Health System & Nurses Week, an annual week of recognition of UTMB’s hospital and nursing staff.