Howard teamed with Jack Murdock, launched a company called Tektronix, and within two years was manufacturing a product in such demand that the company was 60 days behind on deliveries. Oregon's high-technology industry was born. At first glance, Oregon Health Sciences University and Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology might seem to have little in common. The answer lies in the growing convergence of medicine and high tech. The biosciences, meanwhile, are becoming increasingly reliant on engineering and computational technologies for several 21st century fields of discovery, including genetic research, molecular modeling and pattern recognition.
Genomics is a perfect example of an area that's ripe for product development and medical advances.
Now that human genome efforts have produced a working draft of our genetic code, the next step is to translate this information into treatments and cures. The most obvious benefit of the merger may be its potential to bring Portland closer to its goal for a world-class comprehensive research university. Perhaps less obvious is the positive impact that combining the two institutions would have on engineering education, which is crucial for Oregon's high-tech industry. Under the proposed merger, OGI would become a school of science and engineering alongside OHSU's schools of medicine, nursing and dentistry. Combining faculty in the biosciences with faculty in high-tech fields also would enable the institutions to offer graduate and undergraduate opportunities in a new field that combines aspects of biology, computer engineering and information science.