What We Do
The grand challenges of today – protecting human health; understanding the food, energy, water nexus; exploring the universe at all scales – will not be solved by one discipline alone. They require convergence: the merging of ideas, approaches and technologies from various fields of knowledge to stimulate innovation and discovery.
I3R is growing convergence research and fostering collaboration to address Grand Challenges.
Our Initial Grand Challenge
We are committed to take on the Grand Challenge of Integrative Health through an approach that recognizes the multiple physiological, social, and environmental factors at play and an approach that utilizes a holistic and integrative strategy to produce impactful solutions that are deployable at scale.
I3R has a vision of a world that provides all with opportunity to enjoy a high-quality of life. This vision will be achieved through better access to healthy food, innovative technologies that enable a more healthy lifestyle, novel treatments of metabolic disease and its consequences, improved mobility of goods and people, and enhanced digital literacy of the workforce and the broader population. I3R has been created to solve wicked problems. It is committed to take on the Grand Challenge of “Integrative Health” through an approach that recognizes the multiple physiological, social, and environmental factors at play and an approach that utilizes a holistic and integrative strategy to produce impactful solutions that are deployable at scale.
Specifically, I3R defines “Integrative Health” as a human-centered design model that seeks to improve human health by influencing a broad set of physiological, societal, and structural factors.
I3R’s goal is to discover, develop, deliver and deploy solutions across three critical vectors: Health Tech, Food Tech, and Cyber. Together, these three vectors have the potential to penetrate the market with a substantial social and economic return.
CRISPR-enabled advances in cellular agriculture will create food that is nutritious, sustainable, safe, and personalized for targeted health benefits. Whole-person physical and mental health will be enabled by diagnostic and therapeutic technologies that are client-centered, wearable, ingestible, embeddable and deployable at the point-of-care, at home, or in the community. Innovations in data science, computational modeling, AI/ML, IoT, and cybersecurity will underpin the future of food and digital health. To implement solutions for societal impact, I3R’s Integrative Health programs will create solutions for deployment at-scale by considering the supply chain, regulatory, policy, and economic challenges to effective utilization of novel technologies.
I³R will help grow and strengthen the FoodTech and HealthTech ecosystems by bringing together industry, clinical partners, non-profits, policy makers, think tanks, researchers and the community.
These partnerships will not only grow and strengthen our FoodTech and HealthTech ecosystems, they will make a direct, positive societal impact by addressing Metabolic Health.
These ecosystems will be further strengthened through our three-pronged Industry Partnership Program: where students can work with industry members on their identified needs, where industry can work with Institute researchers on joint projects, and where industry has early engagement with I³R researchers and investment opportunities for exclusive access to breakthrough innovations.