Town Hall
T.5 Town Hall

Investigators from across the Tufts CTSI partnership are invited to attend a Town Hall discussion with leadership from the T.5 Capacity in Medical Devices Program to identify research support needs and explore collaborative research opportunities.

Background

An important Tufts CTSI objective is to accelerate the translation of medical device research from idea, to testable product, to impact on health. Most translational efforts fail during the transition from promise to delivery due to scientific, technical, sociological, and financial barriers. Leveraging the new partnership with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), our T.5 Capacity in Medical Devices (T.5) program bridges the critical translation from preclinical development to initial human studies and gives Tufts CTSI investigators access to extensive expertise and specialized resources for prototyping, preclinical testing, and iterative refinement to reduce translational failures in the research-to-device pipeline. We use the term “T.5” to highlight the bidirectional, interdisciplinary, and intersectoral nature of preclinical R&D and the role that testing and optimization in this phase has on outcomes at T1 and beyond.

Open Discussion Goals

The Tufts CTSI T.5 program proposes research and education initiatives including:

  • Creating a T.5 Resource Center to provide consultations and navigation to relevant T.5 resources at MIT and beyond.
  • Building a Living R&D Laboratory to provide a physical space to meet a range of device-testing needs.
  • Providing a multifaceted CTSI touchdown space on MIT campus to foster collaboration to advance medical device/diagnostic clinical research capacity.
  • Supporting research exchange and training opportunities to empower team-centric interaction.

Through the T.5 Town Hall discussion with investigators, we seek to understand the medical device development research and education needs across the Tufts CTSI partnership. These discussions will allow us to identify real-life use case exemplars to inform the development of the most relevant and impactful T.5 program infrastructure, services, and mentoring and to kick-start new research collaborations.

T.5 Program Leadership

The T.5 Town Hall will be led by:

  • Elazer R. Edelman, MD, PhD, Director of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), the Biomedical Engineering Center (BMEC), and the Clinical Research Center (CRC) at MIT and the Tufts CTSI T.5 Director
  • Kumaran Kolandaivelu, MD, PhD, CRC Medical Director at MIT and the Tufts CTSI T.5 Associate Director
  • Catherine Ricciardi, NP, DNP, CRC Nursing Director at MIT

Town Hall Format

The T.5 Town Hall will include a short presentation by the T.5 Leadership Team and an opportunity for input from all participants on the future of the T.5 Program.

Details

Monday, February 4, 12:15-1:45PM
35 Kneeland Street, Boston MA
8th Floor Large Conference Room

Or via WebEx

Registration

To attend in-person or via WebEx, please register here.