Steven Hart, St. Joseph, MO.
Graduate student in Toxicology
KU Medical Center
Facilities: Room for research
“A building like the Kansas Life Sciences Innovation Center makes it easy to go to work and do good science.”
— Steven Hart
Class of 2011
Medications are supposed to help you get well. But for 2 million Americans each year, genetic incompatibility with medications makes their situations worse — causing side effects and even death. Steven Hart wants to keep that from happening.
Hart, who studies how genetics influences drug metabolism, is one of more than 300 researchers and staff at KU’s Kansas Life Sciences Innovation Center, which opened in January 2007 in Kansas City, Kan. Working across academic disciplines, these researchers seek ways to treat, cure or prevent serious diseases and medical conditions that touch many lives, including diabetes, Alzheimer’s, infertility, migraine and various forms of cancer.
Laboratories, designed to accommodate different types of research, bring scientists with related goals together. Open spaces, meeting rooms and abundant natural light foster further collaboration. The center’s equipment and furnishings were funded primarily through a gift from the Hall Family Foundation.
Private donors, through KU Endowment, have funded, in whole or in part, more than two-thirds of campus buildings.
