Student Stories
Steven Hart
St. Joseph, Mo.
Doctoral student, toxicology
KU Medical Center
“A building like the Kansas Life Sciences Innovation Center — with all the tools I need, a design for interaction with colleagues, and an environment with floor-to-ceiling windows — makes it easy to go to work and do good science.”
Medications are supposed to help you get well. But for 2 million Americans each year, genetic incompatibility with a medication makes their situation worse — causing side effects and even death. Steven Hart wants to keep that from happening.
Hart, who studies how genetics influence 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. 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.
The building’s laboratories, designed to accommodate many types of research, bring scientists with related goals together. Open spaces, meeting rooms and abundant natural light foster further interaction. And 12 shared, specialized labs, known as research cores, bring the latest technology to all KU Medical Center researchers. The center’s equipment and furnishings were funded primarily through a gift from the Hall Family Foundation.
“Because of the way this building is set up, I have the option to do a lot more different kinds of experiments because we have core facilities all right here,” Hart said. “If I want to use mass spectrometry to observe my protein, because the mass spec core is right here, I can go right up and talk to those people about a possible collaboration.”
As an undergraduate at Missouri Western University, Hart pioneered a new biotechnology program. Getting a Ph.D., he says, is like job experience: “You get to learn how the community works and entertain ideas that don’t affect the bottom line.”
At KU, Hart holds the prestigious Self Fellowship for doctoral students, created in 1989 by Madison “Al” and Lila Self. He hopes someday to start his own company, one that “has some sort of observable effect outside of academia.”