The transformational discoveries in the fields of molecular biology, genomics, and proteomics and the creation of exciting new technologic tools over the past decade have changed the face of scientifi c investigation at academic medical centers. Th e single investigator working with a relatively small group of postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and research assistants has been replaced by teams of investigators who are often congregated around a single or group of core facilities that support their research eff orts.1,2 When the team consists of faculty from diff erent disciplines working on the same project they are referred to as an "interdisciplinary" team, whereas when faculty from diff erent disciplines work independently on diff erent aspects of a project they are considered to be a "multidisciplinary" team.3 Th e development of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary teams of investigators has led to the creation of numerous research "centers" and "institutes" at academic medical centers across the US. With the development of a National Institute of Health mandate for the creation of Centers for the Clinical and Translational Sciences, many institutions have created institution-wide Centers for Translational Medicine. In 2005, Mallon and Burt reported the results of a survey of 604 such centers and institutes at 57 researchintensive universities. 4 No studies have addressed the value of creating a research center (much less a center for translational research) within the structure of a single department.A department of medicine can be viewed as a microcosm of a medical school, which is made up of between 10 and 15 diff erent divisions; an individual divison may be bigger than many if not most medical school departments. Historically, department chairs have attempted to build research programs in each division of the department and oft en these individual programs have had little intellectual or scientifi c crosstalk.Five years ago we reorganized the structure of research in our Department of Medicine by creating a centralized center to support and nurture departmental research: Th e Center for Translational Medicine. We hypothesized that the creation of a Center dedicated to the clinical and translational sciences would enhance the quality of the department's research eff orts by: (1) Linking the departmental research activities with the strategic clinical goals of the department and the medical center; (2) facilitating the interaction between academic clinicians, basic scientists, and the practice community; (3) optimizing the use of sophisticated technology; (4) breaking down the silo mentality that had created small but independent research fi efdoms and empires within the department; and (5) providing a platform for scientifi c interaction to facilitate the exchange of ideas and technology amongst all investigators independent of their organ of interest. Here we present an assessment of the eff ects of this restructuring on the research eff orts of our department.
Restructuring of the Department...