Centers and Institutes

Centers and Institutes photo

By gathering together scientists and physicians who share a drive to answer questions about the same diseases, research becomes more powerful, collaborations grow stronger and larger-scale projects become possible.

Adding a clinical-care dimension to a center or institute already focused on one disease gives patients access to the experts who work at the frontiers of the field.

ACT Center for Tobacco Treatment, Education and Research

The ACT Center for Tobacco Treatment Education and Research has been helping Mississippians quit tobacco since 1999. Along with direct treatment of patients, training and community outreach, the center's wide variety of research includes clinical trials of promising drugs and basic-science investigations into the genetics of nicotine dependence. Genetics research is helping to identify which medications work best for certain individuals and increasing understanding of just how complex nicotine addiction is.


Cancer Institute

The Cancer Institute combines basic science research, clinical trials of novel drugs and therapies and cutting-edge patient care. The institute, directed by Dr. Lucio Miele, is comprised of oncologists, radiologists, biochemists, microbiologists, pathologists and many professionals. Many of the same doctors serving patients are the same physician-scientists engaging in oncology research. They study cancer genetics, seek to identify biomarkers for certain cancers and create next-generation drugs. The institute's overall goal is to improve prevention and treatment of cancer. The institute also houses the Bioinformatics Core Facility (CBCF).


Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities

The Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities works to integrate ethical decision making into the Medical Center's three missions: education, health care and research. The idea is to make ethics seamless, as it is in life, when nearly every activity can be viewed through a prism of right and wrong behavior. Incorporating ethics into health-care training and practice is relatively straightforward but research offers many paths.


Center of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics

The Center of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics provides the latest in biostatistical and information science expertise to a wide range of clients at UMMC and beyond. We collaborate with biomedical researchers at UMMC and other academic health centers, pharmaceutical companies, medical research organizations, managed care providers, non-profit organizations and government agencies. We provide a wide range of services, education and guidance.


Center for Excellence in Cardiovascular Renal Research

With a long history of discovery, the center's wide-ranging investigations, led by Dr. Joey Granger, target the functions, interconnections and prevention of hypertension, heart, vascular, and kidney diseases. The center is funded by Cardiovascular Dynamics and their Controls, a 41-year program project grant from the National Institutes of Health, and several other NIH and American Heart Association grants. With the funding numerous professors, post-doctoral fellows and graduate students investigate projects in hypertension, kidney function, obesity and preeclampsia.


Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience

The Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience tackles the neurobiology behind diseases and disorders such as depression and alcoholism. By relying on multidisciplinary teams - a mix of investigators and clinicians specializing in different areas - investigators study sleep disorders, major depression disorders, and substance abuse work to draw lines between basic neurobiology and clinical psychiatry.


Geographic Minority Health

The Mississippi Institute for the Improvement of Geographic Minority Health (MIGMH) was established through a competitive grant awarded by the Health and Human Services' Office of Minority Health Research in September 2006. The Institute focuses on some of the key indicators of health status in Mississippi and targets mechanisms to increase the knowledge surrounding these conditions along with strategies to improve them.


Memory Impairment and Neurodegenerative Dementia Center (MIND Center)

The MIND Center seeks to uncover the causes and risk factors for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. Founded in 2010, the center's inaugural study is a large NIH-funded project that includes collaboration with scientists at top universities in the U.S. and that analyzes how brains age. By acquiring new health data on the nearly 16,000 members of the ARIC Study and combining it with data collected during ARIC's 20-year-plus history, center director Dr. Thomas Mosley and his fellow investigators are opening a unique window into physiological changes beginning in middle age that can culminate in Alzheimer's later in life.


Obesity, Metabolism and Nutrition Center

The Obesity, Metabolism and Nutrition Center was conceived as an aggressive, coordinated strategy to bring together researchers, health-care providers, state and local governments and business leaders to provide solutions to the obesity epidemic in Mississippi. The main goal of the center is to translate research discoveries into specific prevention and treatment methods for obesity and related diseases in adults and children.

Women's Health Research Center

The Center for Women's Health Research Center was created in 2009 with the realization that improvement of women's health represents a major unmet health-care need for Mississippi and that research devoted to women's health would form the cornerstone of efforts to meet these needs. Led by Dr. Jane Reckelhoff, the center fosters basic and clinical research into sex-based differences in diseases and health issues specific to women. It also promotes education of basic and clinical researchers, physicians, medical students and the general public in the area of women's health.


UMMC Comprehensive Stroke Center

The UMMC Comprehensive Stroke Center focuses on research, education and clinical care for stroke, the leading cause of disability in the United States. Mississippi lies in the "Stroke Belt," a region of the country with the highest death rate due to stroke. The center's multidisciplinary team fills stroke-specific needs, including education of stroke providers and research on reducing disparities in stroke outcomes. In addition to comprehensive clinical care, the center offers educational efforts, including the creation of fellowship training programs in vascular neurology, neurocritical care and endovascular surgical neuroradiology as well as providing continuing education for UMMC faculty and staff. In research, the Comprehensive Stroke Center identifies collaborative opportunities to advance clinical research in cerebrovascular diseases to improve stroke outcomes.