The Translational Research Lab has been established with the joint efforts of Arkansas State University and St. Bernards Medical Center Internal Medicine Residency Program. A-State's Dr. Xiuzhen Huang is the founder and director of the Translational Research Lab, with Dr. Sara Nehring of SBMC as co-director.

The uniqueness of the Translational Research Lab is the focus of problem defining, based on No-Boundary Thinking (NBT). NBT is a new concept conceived by Dr. Xiuzhen Huang, and is being developed with a current national network group since 2013. We focus on the problems the come directly from the patients and that directly benefit the patients.

The Translational Research Lab here in Arkansas is to conduct Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms design and development for medical questions defined/co-defined directly from the clinic and patients, to drive clinical impacts. We build computational systems connecting data, patients and researchers, i.e., clinical physicians who typically interface with patients and computational scientists who interface primarily with data.

Our research in genomics and imaging is making translational research impacts. Currently our focused research projects include the following categories: (1) solid tumor, such as lung cancer and breast cancer, (2) blood cancer, such as multiple myeloma, (3) brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, (4) cardiovascular diseases, such as heart disease, carotid artery plaque, and (5) emergency room (ER) patient stratification.