STRATEGY

The Asia-Pacific Institute is being developed in several phases.

Phase I
This phase will focus on developing partnerships, recruiting faculty and staff, establishing priority research areas and obtaining funding. The Institute will be staffed by existing UH faculty and new hires that will be brought in over a period of 5 years. Administratively, APITMID is located in the medical school, but staff will represent a number of other administrative units within and from outside the University. These include:

University of Hawaii at Manoa
John A. Burns School of Medicine
Department of Tropical Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Pharmacology
Department of Public Health Sciences and Epidemiology
Department of Cell and Molecular Biology
Department of Medicine
Department of Pediatrics
Pacific Biomedical Research Center
Cancer Research Center of Hawaii
College of Natural Sciences
College of Social Sciences
College of Engineering
School of Ocean and Earth Science Technology

State Department of Health
Division of Disease Outbreak Control
Division of Communicable Diseases
State Division of Laboratories

East-West Center
Hawaii Biotech, Inc.
Maui High-Performance Computing Center

Department of Defense
U.S. Pacific Command
Tripler Army Medical Center
U.S. Navy Preventive Medicine Unit No. 6


Involvement of programs and individuals from the above organizations are based on interest and expertise; selected individuals with specific expertise within the local research community will be actively recruited to join the new Institute.

International partners will include U.S. Government laboratories in Thailand and Indonesia, and institutions in Viet Nam, and other selected countries in the Asia-Pacific Region.

A major partner in this initiative is the State of Hawaii, which has completed building a $150 million medical school campus at Kaka`ako. APITMID occupies the third floor of the biosciences research building, approximately 41,000 square feet of state-of-the art laboratory and animal space.

Six centers constitute the initial anchors for the APITMID programs. The Pacific Center for AIDS Research is Directed by Dr. Cecilia Shikuma, and is already well funded, and includes the Hawaii AIDS Clinical Trial Unit, and the University of Hawaii NeuroAIDS Specialized Neuroscience Research Program. Funding for these programs and other AIDS-related research projects already exceed $4.5 million per year in direct costs.

The Pacific Center for Emerging Infectious Disease Research, directed by Dr. Richard Yanagihara, has recently received a $9.6 million COBRE grant from NIH. The Asia-Pacific Center for Infectious Disease Ecology Research, directed by Dr. Bruce Wilcox and the Asia-Pacific Center for Biosecurity, Disater and Conflict Research, directed by Dr. Fredrick Burkle have only recently been formed. Funding proposals for these two centers are in progress.

Phase II
The emphasis in Phase II will be to develop basic and applied research programs for each of the initial anchor centers. Simultaneously, the Department of Tropical Medicine and Medical Microbiology graduate program will be expanded and improved to attract highly motivated, research-oriented doctoral degree candidates to participate in the research conducted by Institute scientists. In addition, field sites in Asia and the Pacific will be identified to conduct field research, and to train students and faculty, as well as for product testing and evaluation. These field sites will be instrumental in attracting partnerships with other universities and with private industry to test and evaluate newly developed biomedical products.

Time Line
The developmental time line will depend on the staffing and startup funding provided by the university and on extramural funding. Much of Phase I has been completed in conjunction with the opening Kaka'ako campus.

The goal is to complete Phase II approximately five years after initiation. Thus, within five years of occupancy, the Kaka‘ako Campus should have a full-fledged research and graduate program, as well as supporting one or more field sites in Asia or the Pacific.