Mission Statement The mission of Mercer University School of Medicine is “to educate physicians and health professionals to meet the primary care and health care needs of rural and medically underserved areas of Georgia.”  One important dimension of that mission is the research and scholarship of the faculty on whom fulfillment of that mission depends.  The School has modern research facilities in the form of three open communal labs divided into individual bays.  In that way, research faculty of the Division of Basic Medical Sciences share facilities, equipment, and services.  The interdisciplinary distribution of faculty in the labs reflects the interdisciplinary delivery of the basic science curriculum to our students.
		Most of the Divisional faculty conduct collaborative, interdisciplinary research that is funded by both national and local agencies.  Clinical faculty and medical students are regularly involved.  MUSM does not offer graduate studies for the Ph.D. or M.S. degrees. However, postdoctoral opportunities are occasionally available.  The Dean’s Office provides financial support for general laboratory needs, such as animal care, radioactive waste disposal, radiation-badging, and labcoat services. Almost all of the biomedical research within the Division is relevant to the health of its community:    from genotypic variation in women with hypertension to stimulant recognition of cocaine in the brain; from neuroendocrine and immune responses which modulate fuel homeostasis and nutritional status in diabetes to the toxic effects of mercury and other heavy metals on the kidney.		Since 1993, twenty research faculty have published 211 papers, averaging one paper in peer-reviewed journals each year.  Collaborations are stimulated through biomedical research seminars.  Forty in-house seminars have been given since the seminar program began in 1996, and, through additional support from the Dean’s office, we have hosted 19 invited speakers in the clinical and basic biomedical sciences since 2000.